
QassJ 






,4^t&-\^ irf 7n.,<at..«fv^ jl^^a.^ 







H 




'^\^' 






W5^ 



List of Illustrations 
List of Maps and Plans 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

xi 



PART I. THE WORLD BEFORE THE GREEKS 

R 

. Men before Writing ....... 1 

II. Bronze-Age Men in Egypt . . . . .17 

Land and People — Art, Industry, Character — And 
Other Lands. 
J^II. Men of the Euphrates and Tigris .... 46 

^ Land, People, and States — Society and Industry. 

*^^V. The Persian Empire 65 

>j V. Middle States — Phoenicians and Hebrews . . 74 

PART II. THE GREEKS 

VI. Aegean Civilization, 3500-1200 b.c 82 

VII. The Coming of the Achaeans ..... 91 

VIII. Greek Civilization in Homeric Days ... 95 

IX. From the Trojan to the Persian War, 1000-500 b.c. 103 
The Dorians — New Migrations — Revival of Indus- 
try and Art — The "People" Rule at Athens — Mil- 
itary Rule at Sparta. 

X. A Little Geography and Review . ■ . . . 130 

XI. The Persian Wars 135 

XII. Athenian Leadership, 478-431 b.c. .... 152 

XIII. First Period of Strife with Sparta, 461-445 b.c. . 159 

XIV. The Athenian Empire in Peace (The Age of Pericles) 163 
XV. Life in the Age of Pericles 184 

XVI. The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 b.c. . . .195 
XVII. From the Fall of Athens to the Fall of Hellas . 202 
Spartan Supremacy — TReban Supremacy — Mace- 
donian Conquest. 

v 



VI 



CONTENTS 



PART III. THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



CHAPTER 

XVIII 



Alexander Joins East and West 
XIX. Story of the Hellenistic World, 323-220 b.c. 
XX. The Achaean League ...... 

XXI. Hellenistic Society (The Alexandrian Age) . 



PAGE 

212 
218 
223 
229 



PART IV. ROME 

XXII. Land and People , 237 

XXIII. Rome under the Kings 242 

XXIV. The Early Republic — to 367 b.c. . . . 251 

Expulsion of the Kings — Class Struggles — 
Plebeian Gains. 
XXV. Rome Unites Italy, 367-266 b.c. . . .261 

XXVI. United Italy under Roman Rule after 266 b.c. 265 

Citizens — Subjects — Roads and Army. 

XXVII. Government of the Roman Republic . . 273 

XXVIII. Roman Society at its Best, 367-200 b.c. . . 277 

XXIX. The Winning of the West, 264-146 b.c. . . 282 
Rome and Carthage — The War for Sicily — 
The War for Spain. 

XXX. The West from 201 to 146 b.c 296 

Spain — The War for Africa. 

XXXI. The Winning of the East, 201-143 b.c. . . 301 

XXXII. Class Strife Again, 146-49 b.c 308 

XXXIII. The Gracchi, 133-121 b.c 322 

XXXIV. Marius and Sulla, 106-78 b.c 329 

XXXV. PoMPEY AND Caesar, 78-49 b.c 336 



PART V. THE ROMAN EMPIRE 

XXXVI. Founding the Empire, 49-31 b.c. . . .343 

Caesar's Five Years — From Julius to Octavius 
XXXVII. The Emperors of the First Two Centuries . 354 
Augustus — Remaining Julian Caesars — 
Flavian Caesars — Antonine Caesars. 



CONTENTS 



VU 



CHAPTER 

XXXVIII. 



XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 



XLII. 



The Early Empire, to 192 a.d. . . ... 

People and Government — Life and Work — Art 
and Learning — Defense and Revenue — Morals. 
The Third Century — "Barrack Emperors" . 

Rise of Christianity 

The Fourth Century — "Partnershijp Em- 
perors" 

The Empire op the Fourth Century 

The Christian Church — Daily Life — Decay. 



PAGE 

370 



399 
404 

412 
422 



PART VI. ROMANO-TEUTONIC EUROPE, 
378-800 A.D. 

XLIII. Merging of Roman and Teuton . . . 432 

The Teutons in Their Old Homes — Bursting 
of the Barriers — The Greek Empire. 
XLIV. The State of Western Europe from 400 to 

800 A.D 441 

" The Dark Ages ' ' — Teutonic Law — Everyday 
Life — Monasteries — The Heritage of Europe. 
XLV. The Franks and the Papacy .... 451 
The Franks to the Mohammedan Invasion — 
The Mohammedan Peril — Franks and Papacy 
Join Forces. 
XLVI. The Empire op Charlemagne . . , .461 



PART VII. THE FEUDAL AGE, 800-1300 

XLVII. The New Barbarian Attack 

XLVIII. Britain Becomes England . 

XLIX. Feudalism, 800-1300 

L. The Church in the Feudal Age 

LI. England in the Feudal Age 

LII. "The Continent" in the Feudal Age 

LIII. The Crusades, 1100-1300 . 

LIV. The Rise of Towns, 1100-1300 . 



468 
471 
476 
494 
501 
522 
533 
544 



Vlll CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LV.. Learning and Art in the Feudal Age . . 554 

Schools — ■ Medieval Universities — The School- 
men — Roger Bacon — ^ Literature and Art — Gothic 
Architecture. 



PART VIII. FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE 
REFORMATION, 1300-1520 

LVI. England and France, 1300-1520 . . .565 

Hundred Years' War — The Black Death — End 
of Serfdom in England — Consolidation of French 
Territory and Power — Wars of the Roses — New 
Monarchy of the Tudors in England. 

LVII The Other European States, 1300-1520 . . 578 

The Papacy — Holy Roman Empire — Spain — 
Scandanavia — Switzerland — Netherlands — The 
New Monarchic States and the Danger of a Uni- 
versal Monarchy (Charles V). 
LVIII. The Renaissance, 1300-1520 .... 593 

PART IX. THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION, 

1520-1648 

LIX. The Reformation upon the Continent . . 604 

Lutheranism — ■ Calvinism — the Counter- 
Reformation. 
LX. England and the Protestant Movement, 

through Elizabeth's Reign .... 616 

LXI. A Century of Religious Wars * . ... 627 
Spain and the Netherlands — the Huguenots — 
The Thirty Years' War — The Invention of Scien- 
tific Method. 

PART X. ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY 

LXII. English Industry in 1600 639 

LXIII. Puritan England under the First Stuarts . 643 

LXIV- The Great Rebellion and the Commonwealth , 657 



CONTENTS IX 

CHAPTER PAGE 

LXV. The Restoration and the Revolution of 1688 . 662 

LXVI. Expansion into New Worlds 669 



PART XL LOUIS XIV AND FREDERICK II, 

1648-1789 

LXVII. French Leadership . . . . . . " 677 

LXVIII. The Rise of Russia . . . . . .681 

LXIX. Prussia in Europe : England in New Worlds . 685 

Appendix — Book Lists for High School Libraries ... 1 

Index and Pronouncing Vocabulary . . . . . 9 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



10. 

11. 

12. 
13. 
14. 

15. 

16. 
17. 

18. 



19. 
20. 



21. 



22. 



2.3. 
24. 



Flint Fist-hatchet, Stone 

Age 3 

Cliff Caves on the Vez^re 4 
Mammoth Engraved on 

Stone 4 

Flint Scraper .... 5 

Ivory Needles .... 5 

Section of "Cave of the 
Children," showing 
successive layers of 
prehistoric remains . 6 

Reindeer on stone from 
Southern France . . 7 

Gravers 8 

Prehistoric Paint-tubes . 9 

New Stone Age Arrow- 
heads from Britain . 9 
Polished Stone Ax, 

Scotland 10 

Primitive Hoe and Plow 11 

Stonehenge 12 

Pottery from Swiss Lake 

Dwellers ..... 13 
Mortar for Grinding 

Paint, Old Stone Age 14 
Stages in Fire-making . 14 
Modern Egyptian l)y 
Sculptured Head of an 
Ancient King ... 19 
Egyptian Relief — Boat- 
men Fighting on the 

Nile 20 

Egyptian Shoemakers . 21 
Portrait Statue of 

Amten, 3200 B.C. . . 22 
Egyptian Noble Hunt- 
ing Waterfowl with a 
"boomerang" ... 24 
Levying the Tax — 

Egyptian Relief . . 25 
Sphinx and Pyramids . 27 
Section of the Great 

Pyramid 28 



25. 
26. 

27. 

28. 
29. 
30. 
31. 

32. 
33. 

34. 

35. 
36. 

37. 

38. 
39. 

40. 
41. 

42. 

43. 



44. 
45. 



PAGE 

Egyptian Market Scene 

(barter) 31 

Egyptian Sculptors at 

Work 32 

Part of Rosetta Stone 
Containing Hiero- 
glyphics First Deci- 
phered 33 

Part of Same on a Larger 
Scale 33 

Egyptian and Roman 

Numerals .... 35 

Hall of Columns, 

Karnak 36 

Sculptm-ed Funeral 

Couch, Representing 
the Soul by the Corpse 38 

Tomb-Painting Showing 
Offerings to the Dead 39 

Weighing the Soul 
before the Judges of 
the Dead 40 

Rameses II — a Portrait 

Statue 42 

Thdtmosis III ... . 44 

Excavations on Site of 

Ashur 47 

Babylonian Boundary 
Stone 48 

The Oldest Known Arch 49 

Obelisk of Shalmaneser 
II 51 

Babylonian Lion ... 53 

Laws of Hammurapi . 55 

Babylonian Contract 
Tablet 56 

Tablets with Hiero- 
glyphics and Later 
Cuneiform Equiva- 
lents 57 

A Babylonian "Book" . 58 

Babylonian Cylinder 

Seals 60 



Xll 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



46. Impression from a 

Royal Seal .... 61 

47. Colossal Assyrian Man- 

beast 61 

48. Babylonian "Deluge 

Tablet" 63 

49. A Persian Gold Armlet 66 

50. Lions' Frieze from Susa 68 

51. Frieze of Archers — 

from Darius' Palace . 70 

52. Capital of a Persian 

Column 71 

53. Detail from the Throne 

of Xerxes .... 72 

54. The Land of Goshen 

To-day 77 

55. Vase from Knossos, 2200 

B.c 82 

56. Palace Drainage at 

Knossos 83 

57. Vaphio Cups .... 84 

58. Scroll from the Vaphio 

Cups 85 

59. "Throne of Minos" . . 86 

60. Cretan Writing of 2200 

B.c 87 

61. Cretan Cooking Utensils 

of 2200 B.c 88 

62. Silver Head of Bull from 

Mycenae 88 

63. Gate of Lions at 

Mycenae 89 

64. Bronze Inlaid Dagger 

from Mycenae ... 90 

65. Ruins of Stadium at 

Olympia 105 

66. Ruins of Stadium at 

Delphi ..... 100 

67. Attic Vase of Sixth Cen- 

tury B.c 109 

68. Plan of Temple of The- 

seus at Athens . . . 110 

69. Columns to Show Doric, 

Ionic, and Corinthian 
Orders Ill 

70. Doric Capital — from 

the Parthenon . . . 114 

71. The Parthenon To-day . 116 

72. Temple of the Winged 

Victory 117 

73. Greek Soldier .... 118 

74. Scene in the Vale of 

Tempe 132 



PAGE 

75. Marathon To-day . . 139 

76. Thermopylae .... 144 

77. Bay of Salamis To-day 149 

78. Athenian Trireme . . 156 

79. Pericles — a Portrait 

Bust 160 

80. The Acropolis Restored 162 

81. The Pnyx 165 

82. Propylaea of the Acrop- 

olis 169 

83. Figures from the Par- 

thenon Frieze . . . 170 

84. Sophocles — a Portrait 

Statue 172 

85. Theater of Dionysus at 

Athens 173 

86. Thucydides 174 

87. The Acropolis To-day . 178 

88. Greek Girls at Play . . 179 

89. Greek Women at their 

Music 181 

90. Vase Painting — 

Women at their 
Toilet 187 

91. Vase Painting Showing 

the Enticing of Helen 189 

92. Greek Barber, in Terra 

Cotta 190 

93. School Scenes, from a 

Bowl Painting ... 192 

94. The Wrestlers — Myron 193 

95. Greek Women in Vari- 

ous Employments . . 194 

96. "Porch of the Mai- 

dens" from the Erech- 
theum 197 

97. The Hermes of Praxit- 

eles ...... 198 

98. "Praxiteles' Satyr" 

("Marble Faun") . . 199 

99. The Disk Thrower — 

Myron 205 

100. Philip II of Macedon, on 

a Gold Medallion . . 210 

101. The Two Sides of a Gold 

Medallion of Alex- 
ander 216 

102. Pergamos — a Restora- 

tion 218 

103. The Apollo Belvidere . 219 

104. The Dying Gaul ... 220 

105. Pylon of Ptolemy III . 221 

106. Venus of Melos ... 230 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Xlll 







PAGE 




107. 


Alexandrian Lighthouse 


235 


144 


108. 


Etruscan Wall and Arch 








at Sutri 


240 


145 


109. 


Etruscan Toml:)S at 




146 




Orvieto 


241 




110. 


Cloaca Maxima . 


245 


147 


HI. 


An Early Roman Coin . 


246 




112. 


" Wall of Servius " 


248 


148 


113. 


"Etruscan" Wall at 








Perugia 


254 


149 


114. 


Bridge over the Anio 


255 


150 


115. 


A Coin of Pyrrhus . 


263 




110. 


The Appian Way 




151 




To-day 


270 




117. 


Iron Head of a .lavelin 


271 


152 


lis. 


A Coin of Hiero II . 


285 


153 


119. 


Court of a Roman House 


300 


154 


120. 


Ruins at Corinth . . 


305 


155 


121. 


A Pompeian House . . 


311 




122. 


Roman Villa near Tivoli 


313 




123. 


Theater at Pompeii . 


314 


156 


124. 


Cicero 


338 




125. 


Julius Caesar .... 


346 


157 


126. 


The Roman Forum, 








from the North . . 


349 


158 


127. 


The Roman Forum, 








from the South . . 


352 


159 


128. 


The Vatican Statue of 








Augustus 


355 


160 


129. 


A Gold Coin of Augustus 


356 




130. 


Augustus as a Boy . 


356 


161 


131. 


Church of the Nativity 




162. 




at Bethlehem . . . 


357 




132. 


Ruins of the Claudian 




163 




Aqueduct .... 


359 




133. 


Part of the Claudian 
Aqueduct Built into a 




164 




City Wall . . . . 


360 


165 


1.34. 


A Bronze Coin of Nero 


361 




135. 


Arch of Titus and Colos- 




166 




seum 


362 




136. 


Detail from Arch of 




167 




Titus 


363 


168 


137. 


A "Colosseum Coin" of 








Domitian .... 


364 


169 


138. 


Trajan's Column . . . 


365 


170 


139. 


Hadrian's Temple to 




171 




Zeus at Athens . . 


366 




140. 


Tomb of Hadrian . . 


367 




141. 


Lyons in Roman Times 


369 


172 


142. 


Nlmes Aqueduct . . . 


371 




143. 


Bridge at Rimini, Built 




173 




by Augustus . . . 


375 





Trajan's Arch at Bene- 
ventum 377 

Marcus Aurelius . . . 378 

Palace of Roman Em- 
perors at Trier . . . 380 

Detail from Trajan's 

Column 383 

A German Bodyguard of 

Marcus Aurelius . . 386 

The Colosseum . . . 390 

Interior of the Colos- 
seum 391 

The Way of Tombs, 

Pompeii 392 

The Pantheon To-day . 394 

Section of the Pantheon 396 

A Roman Chariot-Race 399 

Jerusalem : Gethsemane 
and the Mount of 
Olives 405 

Trajan's Basilica "Re- 
stored" 408 

General Plan of a 

Basilica 409 

Hall of the Baths of 
Diocletian .... 413 

The Milvian Bridge 
To-day 417 

A Gold Coin of Theo- 
dosius 420 

Roman Coins .... 426 

Agricultural Serfs in 

Roman Gaul ... 429 

Serfs in Roman Gaul 
Making Bread . . 430 

A Silver Coin of Jus- 
tinian 438 

St. Sophia's, Con- 
stantinople .... 439 

Preliminaries to Trial 

by Combat .... 444 

A Trial by Combat . . 445 

Seventh-Century Villa 

in North Gaul ... 446 

The Abbey of Citeaux . 447 

Monks in Field Work . 449 

Repast in Hall of Prank- 
ish Chieftain, Seventh 
Century . . . . . 452 

Court of the Lions, Al- 
hambra 456 

Cloisters of St. John 

Lateran 459 



XIV 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

174. Seal of Charlemagne . 461 

175. A Silver Coin of Charle- 

magne 463 

176. Remains of a Viking 

Ship 469 

177. St. Martin's, Canter- 

bm-y 473 

178. Anglo-Saxon Plowing . 475 

179. Conway Castle ... 476 

180. Bedlam Castle ... 478 

181. Drawbridge and Port- 

cuUis 479 

182. Knight ia Plate Armor 480 

183. A Baron's Court ... 482 

184. Reaper's Cart, Foiir- 

teenth Century . . 487 

185. Peasants' May Dance . 488 

186. Falconry 489 

187. A Court Fool .... 490 

188. Jugglers in the Sword 

Dance 491 

189. The Exercise of the 

Quintain 492 

190. Norman William's 

Ship 502 

191. Battle of Hastings (Bay- 

eux Tapestry) . . . 503 

192. Norman Doorway . . 508 

193. Facsimile Lines from 

Magna Carta . . . 516 

194. An English Bridge, 

Fourteenth Century . 521 

195. Damascus Gate, Jeru- 

salem 533 

196. Detail from the Mosque 

of Cordova .... 534 

197. A Byzant (Bezant) . . 535 

198. Crusader Taking the 

Vow 537 

199. Effigies of Knights Tem- 

plars 539 

200. Siege of a Medieval 

Town 544 

201. Ruins of a Rhine Castle 545 

202. Walls of Aigues Mortes 547 

203. Old Street in Rouen . . 549 

204. Medieval Town Hall, 

Oudenarde .... 550 

205. Torture by Water . . 551 

206. Rheims Cathedral . . 561 

207. Salisbury Cathedral . . 562 



208. 

209. 
210. 

211. 
212. 
213. 

214. 
215. 
216. 
217. 
218. 

219. 



220. 
221. 

222. 
223. 
224. 



225. 

226. 
227. 

228. 

229. 
230. 

231. 

232. 
233. 
234. 
235. 



236. 



237. 
238. 



Flying Buttresses, Nor- 
wich Cathedral . . 563 
Salisbury Cloisters . . 563 
English Family Dinner, 

Fourteenth Century . 566 
A "Bombard". ... 567 
John Wyclif .... 568 
An English Carriage, 

Fourteenth Century . 569 
The Parliament of 1399 572 
Joan of Arc at Orleans 574 
Guy's Tower .... 575 
A Medieval Battle . . 576 
Hall of Clothmakers' 

Gild, Ypres .... 587 
Illustration from a Fif- 
teenth Century 
Manuscript Showing 
Maximilian, etc. . . 589 
Ca d'Oro, Venice ... 590 
The Ducal Palace, 

Venice 594 

St. Mark's, Venice . . 595 

Erasmus 599 

Illustration in Thir- 
teenth Century 
Manuscript Showing 
a Monk Teaching the 

Globe 601 

Columbus at the Court 

of Isabella .... 603 
St. Peter's, Rome . . 605 
A Village Maypole, Six- 
teenth Century . . 611 
The Ruins of Tintern 

Abbey 618 

Sir Thomas More . . 619 
Kenilworth Castle in 

1620 622 

Kenilworth Castle 

To-day 623 

Charles I (Van Dyck) . 648 
Cromwell (Lely) . . . 65S 
Sir Henry Vane . . . 660 
La Salle Taking Posses- 
sion of the Missis- 
sippi Valley for France 67 1 
Elizabeth Knighting 

Drake 673 

Moscow 683 

Crossed Swords . . . 691 



MAPS AND PLANS 



1. 

2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 

20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
24. 
25. 
26. 
27. 
28. 
29. 
30. 
31. 

32. 
33. 
34. 



Ancient Egypt 

The First Homes of Civilization ; Colored 
The Egyptian Empire at Its Greatest Extent 
Assyrian and Babylonian Empires 
Lydia, Media, Egypt, Babylonia, about 560 b.c 



facing 



Colored 
facing 



The Persian Empire ; Colored 

Syria, showing Solomon's Empire . 

Greece and Adjoining Coasts ; Colored. . -. after 

The Greek Peninsula ; Colored 

The Greek World ; Colored . 

The Peloponnesian League 

Plan of Marathon .... 

Attica, with Reference to Marathon and Salamis 
Athens and Its Ports, Showing the Long Walls 
Plan of Athens ...... 

The Athenian Empire ; Colored .... after 

The Acropolis of Athens 

Plan of a Fifth Century Delos House 

Greece at the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War ; Colored 

after 
Plan of the Battle of Leuctra 
Growth of Macedonia . 
Empire of Alexander of Macedon ; Colored . . after 

Achaean and Aetolian Leagues 
The World According to Eratosthenes 
Italy (for general reference) ; Colored . . . after 

The Peoples of Italy . . . 
Rome and Vicinity .... 

Rome under the Kings .... 
Italy about 200 b.c. : Roads and Colonies 
Rome and Carthage at Opening of Punic Wars 
Mediterranean Lands at Opening of Second Punic War; 

Colored ........ after 

Roman Dominions and Dependencies in 146 a.d. . 

Vicinity of the Bay of Naples, Showing Pompeii and Vesuvius 

The Roman Empire, Showing Stages of Growth and Main 

Roads; Colored ....... after 

XV 



PAGE 

18 
41 
43 
50 

65 

67 

78 

82 

90 

108 

126 

138 

147 

154 

157 

158 

168 

185 

198 
206 
209 
214 
224 
234 
238 
239 
242 
243 
269 
284 

288 
306 
364 

364 



XVI MAPS AND PLANS 

PAGE 

35. Rome under the Empire, Showing Walls of Aurelian . . 402 

36. Migrations of the Teutons and Other Barbarians; Colored 

after ■ 432 

37. Teutonic Kingdoms on Roman Soil, 600 a.d. ; Colored " 436 

38. Kingdom of the Merovingians ; Colored . . facing 451 

39. Europe in 814 a.d. ; Colored . . . , . after 464 

40. The Fields of History to 800 a.d 466 

41. The Division of Verdun ; Colored. . . . after 468 

42. England and the Danelagh, 900 a.d. . . . . .474 

43. Ecclesiastical Map of Medieval England .... 499 

44. England and France at Four Periods ; Colored . facing 523 

45. German Colonization on the.East, 800-1400 ; Colored after 524 

46. Germany and Italy, 1254-1273 ; Colored . . facing 531 

47. Europe by Rehgions, about 1100 a.d. ; Colored . after 536 

48. Dominions of the Hansa and of the Teutonic Knights ; 

Colored ........ after 550 

49. Germany about 1550 ; Colored . . . . . " 580 

50. Southeastern Europe at the Entrance of the Turk ; Colored 

facing 583 

51. The Swiss Confederation, 1291-1500 . . . . .585 

52. Europe in the Time of Charles V ; Colored . . . after 592 

53. Territorial Changes of the Thirty Years' War ; Colored /acwg 635 

54. French posts in America in the Seventeenth Century ; Colored 

facing 670 

65. English America, 1660-1690 after 075 

56. European Possessions in America at Different Periods to 

1763 (three maps) ; Colored .... after 686 

57. Europe in the Eighteenth Century . . . after 690 



THE STORY OF 
MAN'S EARLY PROGRESS 



THE STORY OF MAN^S EARLY 
PROGRESS 



Through the ages one increasing -purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. 

— Tennyson. 

PART I— THE WORLD BEFORE THE GREEKS 



CHAPTER I 

MEN BEFORE WRITING 

November 11, 1918, at an early morning hour, the representa- 
tives of Germany accepted the terms of armistice dictated by 
Marshal Foch, commander-in-chief of the Allies. Within three 
hours, nearly every steam whistle in America was sounding the 
glad tidings of Germany's surrender. Only a few miles from 
General Foch's headquarters where the armistice was signed is 
the city of Ghent. There, about a hundred years before (Decern- Rapid 
ber 14, 1814), a peace was signed between England and the ^ • ^^^1. 
United States. But almost four weeks after the signing of that last century 
peace, many gallant lives were sacrificed in the Battle of New 
Orleans because the news of Ghent had not reached America. In- 
deed the War of 1812 would not have been fought except for 
misunderstandings which steamships and electric cables would 
have cleared up promptly. 

In everyday matters, too, the changes of the last hundred 
years or so are quite as marked. When George Washington 
journeyed from Mount Vernon to New York, in 1789, to take 
up his duties as President, he made the wearisome twelve-day 

1 



2 MEN BEFORE WRITING 

trip on horse-back. At Philadelphia he might have taken the 
slow, jolting stage-coach for the rest of the way ; but both for 
speed and comfort, he chose to keep to his horse. To-day we 
make that journey in a night, resting in a cozy compartment of 
a sleeper or reading at ease by brilliant electric lamps. 

The tallow candle and the pine-knot fire on the hearth were 
the best artificial lights in the days of Washington. Abraham 
Lincoln knew no better light until late in his life, when kerosene 
lamps came into use. No woman in Lincoln's presidency ever 
cooked by a gas range, and no woman in Washington's time 
ever cooked by any sort of iron stove. Washington was one 
of the leading farmers of his day, but a wooden plow and a 
clumsy harrow were the only farm machinery drawn by horses 
that he ever saw. Even the small reapers and threshers of 
Lincoln's time are now fit only for some museum of curiosities. 
Carpenters and masons now work eight hours a day ; but until 
long after. Washington no laborer ever dreamed of working less 
than fourteen hours in summer — and for a much smaller 
wage than for our shorter laboring day. The palaces of kings 
a century ago had fewer actual comforts and conveniences than 
the modest homes of well-paid laborers to-day. 

At first it is hard to understand that such changes had been 
going on for long ages before Lincoln and Washington. Twenty 
thousand years ago no one traveled even in Washington's way. 
There were no coaches, for no one had found how to make a 
wheel ; and, though the wild horse was hunted for food, no one 
had tamed it. Indeed there was no need to travel. No man 
could possibly want to go from the Potomac to the Hudson. If 
two men living a score of miles, apart met at all, the stronger 
killed and plundered the weaker. 

History is the stonj of huvian progress from that early sav- 
agery to our present civilization. To raise regular food 
crops, instead of living wholly by hunting, was a great step 
upward. To learn to use oar and sail, to build roads, to 
exchange products of one region for those of another, to in- 



THE " CHIPPED STONE " MAN 

vent the bow, spinning wheel, telephone, dynamo, — all these 
things were steps. But civilization has to do also with art, 
literature, home life, religion, laws, education. The civiliza- 
tion of a people is the sum of its advances in all that ma;kes 
life better and happier. 




The first men were more helpless and brutelike than the The first 
lowest savages in the world to-day. Their only clothing was ™^^ 
the coarse hair that covered their bodies. They had neither 
fire nor knife, — no tools or weapons ex- 
cept their hands and their formidable apelike 
teeth and chance clubs or stones. The first 
marked gain was the discovery by some 
savage that he could chip off flakes from a 
flint stone by striking it with other stones, 
so as to give it a sharp edge, a keen point, 
and a convenient shape for the hand to 
grasp. This invention lifted man into the 
first Stone Age. 

In Europe the Stone Age began at least 
100,000 years ago. The mighty rivers of 
still earlier times had washed out many 
caverns in their limestone banks. As the 
waters cut down a deeper bed, such caves 
were left dry, above ^'the new water level ; 
and they became the favorite shelter of the 
early Stone-age man — though he often had 
to fight for them with the ferocious cave- 
bear. By digging in these caves to-day, 
we find stone tools of the "cave-man" 
where he dropped them on the earth floor - 
forty feet below the present floor. 

There too we find remains of great heaps of the bones of the 
animals he ate. 'Some of these animals are now extinct, like 
the terrible saber-toothed tiger and the huge mammoth ; and 
many of the rest, like the reindeer, wolf, hippopotamus, wooly 



Flint Fist-hatchet 
from Kent's Cave 
in Southern Eng- 
land, found in the 
lowest of several 
distinct layers of 
deposits, some 
twenty-five feet 
below the present 
surface. The im- 
plement is about 
six inches long. — 
From Parkyn's 
Prehistoric Art. 

•perhaps thirty or 



The first 
Stone Age, 

100,000 

years ago 



MEN BEFORE WRITING 




Cliff Caves on the Vezfere, overlooking the modern village Le Moustier in 
Southern France. From some of the caves whose dark mouths show in 
this cut have come the oldest remains pictured in this book. One can 
make out two terraces in the illustration. The second of these also is 
rich in remains, because here the ancient hunters had a station, out in 
the sun, to fashion their flint weapons. — From Osborn's Men of the Old 
Stone Age. 




Mammoth engraved by an Old Stone Age artist on a piece of ivory tusk. 
Found in a cave in Southern France. See p. 8. — From Parkyn'g 
Prehistoric Art. The student should examine that work, or Mr. Osborn's 
book referred to above, for Cave-Men drawings of the Saber-Toothed 
Tiger and of the Cave-Bear, and especially for the colored representa- 
tions of Stone Age paintings, such as cannot be adequately reproduced 
in this book. 



THE CAVE-MAN'S ART 



rhinoceros, and horse are no longer found wild in central 
Europe. In one cave in Switzerland, the bones show that 
generations of cave-men had eaten more than 1000 cave-bears ; 
and a cave in Sicily held remains of 2000 hippopotamuses. 

In almost the lowest deposits many pieces of charred bone The fire- 
and wood, and some soHd layers of ashesj show that men learned "^^'^^''s 




Flint Scraper, front and back, found in the lower deposits of the cave of 
Le Moustier in Southern France, one of the oldest homes of man. — 
From Parkyn's Prehistoric Art. 

to use fire soon after reaching the Stone Age. With their stone 
knives, they could shape sticks so as to make fire by friction. 
With his knife, too, the cave-man could remove the hides from 
the animals he killed; and while he dozed by the fire after 
gorging on their flesh, his cave-woman worked on these skins 
with stone scrapers. Then when 
they were cleaned and dried and 
softened, she sewed them into 
clothing with hone needles ■ — 
which now and then she lost on 
the dimly lighted floor. The 
early deposits contain no spin- 
dles, with which thread could 
have been spun from vegetable 
fiber, and so these needles must have been threaded with finely 
divided sinew such as the Eskimo woman uses to-day. 

As we examine the layers of deposits from the bottom upward, Tools of 
we find better tools and more kinds of them, until we have a ^^^ 
great variety of shapely fiint knives, spear-heads, daggers, 




Ivory Needles of the Old Stone 
Age. Europe had no better needles 
untU some three hundred years 

ago. 



6 



MEN BEFORE WRITING 



scrapers, chisels, and drills fine enough to make the deHcate 
eyes in the bone needles. Toward the close of the age, the cave 
dwellers learned to make clay pots, in which to cook their food 
in new ways, and to make earihcmoarc lamps, with wicks swim- 
ming in fat. Next, bone and stone arrow-heads show that the 




Vertical Section of tfie " CA^^; of the Children," on the south coast 
of France, so named from the two prehistoric infants whose skeletons were 
found in layer A. Three others of the eleven distinct layers contained 
prehistoric skeletons buried by ancient hearths. And the others contain 
hearth-ashes and other proofs of human habitation, with bones of wild 
animals, ranging from rhinoceros and lion to recent European animals. 
Tools in the bottom layers are like those in the Moustier Caves. — From 
Osborn's Men of the Old Stone Age. 

bow had been invented, to lengthen man's arm, and soon after- 
ward we find ingenious bone straighteners, like those used now 
by many savage peoples, to give the arrow-shaft its proper 
shape. Man began, too, to make living animals serve him. 
He tamed the young of wolf or jackal into the first dog; and 
his drawings show that he taught the reindeer to draw his sled. 
But through all their tens of thousands of years, the Chipped 



THE CAVE-MAN'S ART 7 

Stone men were hunters merely. They never learned to farm. Hunters, 
Besides the animals they killed, they had for food only the ^°^ 
nuts and roots and seeds the women and children gathered. 
Their homes were littered with loathsome heaps of rotting 
refuse. Their numbers must have been scanty, and their 




Reindeer graven on stone by a Stone Age artist. Note the remarkable 
spirit and accurate detail. The drawing is full life size. From a cave 
in Southern France — where the reindeer has been extinct for many 
thousand years. 

tribal unions very small — if indeed they had advanced far 
enough to have tribes and chiefs at all. 

The earliest cave-man, however, must have believed in a life Ideas of a 
after death; for he buried the bodies of those he loved and ^^^^^ * ® 
honored under the hearth before which they had rested in life, 
and in the shallow grave he placed food and precious weapons 
ready for use when the dead should awake in the spirit world. 
The cave-man, too, had a keen interest in the world about him, 
and felt much of its beauty. In stormy seasons he amused Cave-artists 
himself by carving on the walls of his cavern or on flat bones ; 



8 



MEN BEFORE WRITING 



and he reproduced with amazing accuracy the fierce wild-boar 
in the charge, the mare nourishing her foal, a herd of deer 
browsing by a peaceful pool, and countless other animal forms. 
As Kipling writes, — 

"Later he pictured an aurochs — later he pictured a bear — 
Pictured the saber-toothed tiger dragging a man to his lair — . 
Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone — 
Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone." 

The cave-artist learned even to 2)aint these forms. For his 
colors he ground fine the red oxide of iron and similar clays of 

other colors, and then 
packed them into hollow 
horns as "paint tubes," or 
pressed them into crayons. 

Finally, some ten thou- 
sand years ago, some 
ingenious barbarian dis- 
covered that he could grind 
his stone knife with certain 
stones, and so get keener 
edge and sharper point 
than merely by chipping 
at it. This invention be- 
gan a new era. The " Old 
Stone Age," or age of 
chipped stone, gave way 
to the "New Stone Age." 




Gravers used in cutting designs on stone 
by Old Stone Age men ; found in 
Southern France. Number 3 is a 
combined graver and scraper. — From 
Parkyn's Prehistoric Art. 



The ground implements 
are more beautiful in finish than those of the older age, and much 
more effective. A ground flint ax, even in the hands of a modern 
workman, unused to it, will, cut down a large tree with fair dis- 
patch ; and the new flint arrow-heads, after these ten thousand 
years, are found still embedded in the bones of men and beasts. 
The "New Stone" men made gains more rapidly than had 
been possible to their predecessors. They soon became herds- 



THE NEW STONE AGE 



9 



men, with cows, asses, sheep, and goats ; and some races among 

them grew into farmers. Seeds gathered by the women for food The first 

must often have dropped near the home, and some of these ^'^™®''^ 





Views of a Prehistoric Paint Tube, 
made of reindeer bone. Found, with 
ochre still in it, in a cave of Southern 
France. — From Parky n. 

must now and then have grown 
into plants and produced new seed. 
The convenience of so gathering 
seeds at the door, instead of search- 
ing for them through the forest, 
would suggest to some thoughtful 

woman the idea of "planting" seed, and finally of preparing a 
patch of ground by stirring it with a crooked stick. Such a 
woman with such a "hoe" was probably the first "farmer." 
Wheat, barley, and millet were among the grains first cultivated 
in Europe. Oats and rye came in later. 

Thousands of farmers, even in a rude stage of agriculture, 



Arrow-heads of the New 
Stone Age in Britain. 



10 



MEN BEFORE WRITING 



can live in a territory that could furnish food for only a few 
score of hunters; and so the New Stone "barbarians" dwelt 
no longer in isolated caves, but in villages and towns of simple 
one-room huts of clay or wood. With their improved weapons, 
they conquered widely, especially among the backward tribes 

that had remained in the "sav- 
agery" of the Chipped Stone 
Age ; and so they formed larger 
societies with some trade be- 
tween one and another. 

Stone "whorls" ^ among the 
deposits show that women now 
spun flax or wool into thread or 
yarn ; and no doubt they then 
wove the yarn into cloth on 
rude looms such as some Ameri- 
can Indians used when this hemi- 
sphere was discovered. Our 
word tvife (like the German loeib) 
is from the same root as web and 
weave, and means the weaver. In 
all this early society, man was 
essentially a fighter: woman, 
first with her bone needle and 
perhaps with her crooked hoe, 
and later with her spindle and 
loom, represents the industrial 
side of human life — the side 
that has developed into our 
industrial civilization. 
Now that captives could be used to watch herds and till the 
soil, the vanquished in war were no longer killed or tortured to 




Polished Stone Ax, c 
showing side and edges, 
in Southei'n Scotland. 



Celt, 
Found 



1 The spinner placed a pile of flax before her, fastened one end of a fiber 
to her "whorl," drew out a convenient length from the pile, and twisted it 
by giving the whorl a whirling motion. Then the twisted thread was wound 
up and another length was drawn out, to be treated in like manner. 



THE NEW STONE AGE 11 

death as formerly, but were merely made slaves. And as the 
growing populations called for larger grain fields than women 
could till with their stick "hoes," the hoe handle was enlarged 
into a "beam" to which cows could be harnessed, and two new 
handles were added to guide the "plow.'" 





Primitive Hoe and Plow. — From early Egyptian monuments, showing 
the evolution of the plow as described in the text above. 

The best known of the New Stone men in Europe were the The Lake 
Swiss "Lake Dwellers" — the first men who are known posi- ■"^^^^^''^ 
tively to have built wooden houses. Each house rested on a 
platform supported several feet above the water by a group of 
immense piles, — twenty-foot logs sharpened at one end and 
driven firmly into the lake bottom. Many a lake contained 
extensive villages of such houses, far enough from land to be 
safe from hostile surprise, and built in curving lines to follow 
the trend of the shore. It is not uncommon for savage peoples 
to build in like fashion to-day, on a smaller scale, in shallow 
lakes or in morasses. 

Some seventy years ago a sudden lowering of the water re- 
vealed ruins of these ancient villages at various places in Switizer- 
land, and the sediment of the lake bottoms has yielded up many 
remains that show how these peculiar people lived. The hun- 
dred bushels of wheat that had fallen through the floors of one 
village prove that the villagers must have farmed the neighbor- 
ing shores industriously. A stone whorl still wound with flax, 
many fragments of rotting cloth, pieces of tanned leather, 
wooden shoe-lasts like those our shoemakers use, all tell their 
story. Bronze tools in the upper sediment, on top of deep 
layers containing only stone tools, show that these settlements 
lived on into the beginning of the " Age of Metals " (p. 13 below). 



12 



MEN BEFORE WRITING 



Stonehenge 
and like 
structures 



In other parts of Europe, — Denmark, England, France, — 
the towns of the New Stone men were protected by earth walls 
or by artificial lakes or moats. In those districts the people also 
quarried huge blocks of rough, undressed stone, weighing fifty 
tons or even three hundred tons apiece, moved them long dis- 
tances, and raised them into .tombs and sometimes into great 
circles for temples or for religious "games." Near such a ruin 




Stonehenge. These are four of the sixty such huge pillars, some 30 feet 
high, forming a circle 100 feet across, on Salisbury Plain in South 
England. Some of the pillars have fallen, along with most of the slabs 
reaching from pillar to pillar. Two miles away is the site of a Stone 
Age town, and, near by, the traces of the ancient race course mentioned 
in the text. 

at Stonehenge, there can still be traced a two-mile chariot 
course, about which, no doubt, shouting multitudes crowded 
to see the races. Certainly these men had tamed the horse 
and invented wheeled carriages. 



iiie Age of The next great advance was begun, not in Europe, but in the 
!h?NuJ" -^^^^ valley in Africa. Pieces of malachite, a kind of copper 
yalley ore, are found there in a loose state. No doubt many a camp- 

fire melted ("reduced") the metal from such scattered stones 



AN Early copper age 



13 



into shining copper globules ; and finally some observant 
hunter found that the bright metal could be worked more 
easily than stone, and into better tools. So men passed from 
the Stone Age to the Age of Metals, about seven thousand years 
ago. 

Copper implements, it is true, were soft, and soon lost their The Bronze 
edge ; but before long, perhaps again by happy accident, men ^^ 
learned to mix a little tin with the copper in the fire. This 
formed the metal we call 
bron~e. Bronze is easily 
worked ; but, after cool- 
ing, it is much harder 
than either of its parts. 
The "Bronze Age" men 
equipped themselves with 
weapons of keener and 
more lasting edge, and 
more convenient form, 
than had ever been known. 
With these they conquered 
widely among the Stone 
Age men about them, and 
also added greatly to their 

command over nature. The use of bronze entered southeastern 
Europe some 5000 years ago — about 3000 B.C. — and spread 
slowly westward to the Atlantic during the next thousand years. 




Pottery (I size) from the Robenhausen 
Lake Dwelling in Switzerland. These 
pieces are remarkable in their simplicity 
and plainness. Usually the Stone Age 
pottery is marked by a profusion of 
ornament — dots, zigzags, curves, in 
complicated designs. 



The student must remember that when we speak of a 
Stone Age followed by an Age of Metals, we refer always to 
some given part of the world. When Columbus discovered 
America, Europeans had long been in the Iron Age ; but 
the American natives were mainly in the Stone Age, though 
some of them were growing into the Age of Copper. Re- 
mote tribes in the Philippines and in parts of South America 
and Australia are still in the Stone Age. Even among the 
same people the different "ages" overlap. Chiefs and 



14 



MEN BEFORE WRITING 



" Prehis- 
toric " and 
" historic " 
man 



nobles used bronze a long time before the poorer classes 
could replace their stone implements with better ones. 

Soon after the Age of Metals began, men came to use sovie 
method of tvriting. With that invention we enter the "historic" 

period. All this ear- 
lier progress is called 
"prehistoric."^ We 
are now about to 
leave Europe for a 
while, to study the 
earliest " historic " 
men in Egypt and 
in the neighboring 
parts of Asia ; but 
first let us sum up 
four supreme con- 
tributions made by 
prehistoric man — contributions upon which all later civiliza- 
tion rests. Man to-day is "the heir of all the ages," and as 
we read historv we "take stock" of our inheritance. 




Views of a Small " Mortar" hollowed out of 
stone, in which paint was probably ground up. 
Found in an Old Stone Age deposit in Southern 
France. 




— _ iT; ;^ -^^ 



Some Stages in Fire-making. — From Tylor. 

1 . The iLSc of fire made it possible to advance beyond raw food 
and finally beyond stone tools. All wild animals fear flame ; 

1 In late years we have learned so much of early man that this term pre- 
historic is an unhappy one. But it had come into general use many years 
ago, when we knew almost nothing of man before he left written records, 
and scholars have thought best not to abandon it. Properly speaking, 
however, everything that we know about the past life of man is part of 
human history. 



WHAT PREHISTORIC MAN GAVE US 



15 



but, at some early period of the Old Stone Age, man had come 
to know it for his truest friend. The old Greeks had a fable 
that the divine Prometheus stole fire from the gods for the 
service of man. Modern scholars think it probable that the 
j&rst source of fire for men was some tree ablaze from lightning 
— a thing that happens thousands of times every year in our 
forests to-day. As the "Stone Age" man chipped at his stone 
knife, or as he worked on his wooden tools, much heat must 
sometimes have been developed ; and this would suggest 
friction as a source of fire. The methods of making fire which 
are pictured on the opposite page were all invented by pre- 
historic man; and no other way was known, except striking 
two stones together, down to very recent times. 

2. Most of the domestic animals familiar to us in our barn- 
yards had been tamed by prehistoric man. One reason why 
the Western Hemisphere remained backward until discovered 
by Europeans is found in the lack of animals in it suited for 
domestication. 

3. Wheat, barley, rice, and nearly all our other important 
food grains and garden vegetables, were selected from the myriads 
of wild plants, and cultivated and developed. Modern science 
has failed to find one other plant in the Old World so useful to 
man as these which prehistoric man there selected. Their only 
rivals are the potato and maize ("corn"), which the "Stone 
Age" men in America had learned to cultivate. 

4. The invention of writing multiplied the value of language. 
Writing is an " artificial memory," and it also makes it possible for 
us to speak to those who are far away, and even to those not 
yet born. Many early peoples used a picture writing such as is 
common still among North American Indians. In this kind 
of writing, a picture represents either an object or some idea 
connected with that object. A drawing of an animal with 
wings may stand for a bird or for flying; or a character like 
this O stands for either the sun or for light. At first such 
pictures are true drawings : later they are simplified, for easier 
writing, into forms agreed upon. Thus in ancient Chinese, 



Contribu- 
tions from 
prehistoric 
man 



The inven- 
tion of 
writing 



16 



THE BRONZE AGE 



man was represented by /"v, and in modern Chinese by A . 
Numerals are probably the earliest picture writing ; and even 
in our Arabic numerals, especially in l,Z,3.5, we can still see 
the one, two, three, or five lines that stood for numbers. 

Vastly important is the advance to a rebus stage of writing. 
Here a symbol has come to have a soimd value wholly apart 
from the original object, as if the symbol O above were used 
with D (D O) to make the word delight. So in early Egyptian 
writing, O, the symbol for "mouth," was pronounced ru. 
Therefore it was used as the last syllable in writing the word 
khopiru, which meant "to be," while symbols of other objects 
in like manner stood for the other syllables. 

This representation of syllables by pictures of objects is the 
first stage in sound writing, as distinguished from picture writing 
proper. Finally, some of these characters are used to represent 
not whole syllables, but single sounds. Such a character we call 
a letter. One of Kipling's Just So stories tries to show how such 
a change might come about. Then, if these letters are kept, 
and all other characters dropped, we have a true alphabet. 

Picture writing, such as that of the Chinese, requires many 
thousand symbols. Several hundred characters are necessary 
for even simple syllabic writing. But a score or so of letters 
are enough for an alphabet. 

No further reading is suggested at this stage in connection with class 
work on the preceding topics. But students who wish to read for 
pleasure will enjoy any of the following books : Myres' Dawn of His- 
tory, 13-28 ; Clodd's Story of Primitive Man, 35-76 ; Clodd's Story of 
the Alphabet; Holbrook's Cave, Mound, and Lake Dwellers; Waterloo's 
Story of Ab (fiction). A very interesting larger book, handsomely 
illustrated, is Solas' Ancient Hunters. 



CHAPTER II 

'BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT 

I. LAND AND PEOPLE 

Egypt is the gift of the Nile. — Herodotus. 

Ancient Egypt, by the map, is as large as Colorado ; but seven The Nile 
eighths of it is only a sandy border to the real Egypt. That ^^'^ Egypt 
real Egypt is smaller than Maryland, and consists of the valley 
of the Nile and of its delta. 

The valley proper forms Upper Egypt. It is a strip of rich 
soil about 600 miles long and 20 miles wide — a slim oasis be- 
tween parallel ranges of desolate limestone hills which once 
formed the banks of a mightier Nile. While yet a hundred 
miles from the sea, the narrow valley broadens suddenly into 
the delta. This Lower Egypt has been built up out in the 
sea from the mud carried there by the river. It is a squat 
triangle resting on a two-hundred mile base of curving, marshy 
coast. 

And the Nile keeps Egypt alive. Rain falls rarely in the 
valley; and toward the close of the eight cloudless months 
between the annual overflows, there is a short time when the 
land seems gasping for water. Then the river begins to rise 
(in July), swollen by tropical rains at its upper course in distant 
Abyssinia ; and it does not fully recede into its regular channel 
until November. During the days while the flood is at its 
height, Egypt is a sheet of turbid water, spreading between two 
lines of rock and sand. The waters are dotted with towns 
and villages, and marked off into compartments by raised 
roads, running from town to town. As the water retires, the 
rich loam dressing, brought down from the hills of Ethiopia, is 

17 



18 



"BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT 









left spread over the fields, renewing their wonderful fertility 
from year to year; while the long soaking supplies moisture 
to the soil for the dry months to come. 

The oldest records yet found in Egypt reach back to about 
6000 B.C. The use of bronze was already well advanced, but 

remains in the soil 
show that there 
had been earlier 
dwellers in the 
valley using rude 
stone implements 
and practicing sav- 
age customs. Food 
was abundant 
there, — not only 
fish and waterfowl, 
but also the won- 
derful date palm 
and various wild 
grains. This wealth 
of food attracted 
tribes from all the 
neighboring regions 
at an early date; 
and the struggles of 
these peoples, and 
the intermingling 
of the strongest of 
them, at length 
produced the vigor- 
ous Egyptian race 
of history — a type which has lasted to the present day. 
The first inhabitants lived by fishing along the streams and 
hunting fowl in the marshes. When they began to take ad- 
vantage of their rare opportunity for agriculture, new prob- 
lems arose. Before that time, each tribe or village could be a 




AJfCIEJfT EGYPT 

jy e; T H I o P X-A^^-' 

Second Cataract 



SCALE OF MILES 
20 40 00 80 100 



"THE GIFT OF THE NILE" 



19 



law to itself. But now it became necessary for whole districts 
to combine in order to drain marshes, to create systems of 
ditches for the distribution of the water, and to build reservoirs 
for the surplus. 

Thus the Nile, which had made the land, played a part in 
making Egypt into one state} To control the overflow was the 
first common interest of all the people. At first, no doubt 



The Nile 
makes for 
union 




Photograph of a Modern Egyptian Woman Sitting by a Sculptured 
Head of an Ancient King. — From Maspero's Dawn of Civilization. 
Notice the likeness of feature. The skulls of the modern peasants and of 
the ancient nobles are remarkably alike in form. 

through wasteful centuries, separate villages strove only to 
get each. its needful share of water, without attention to the 
needs of others. The engravings on early monuments show 
neighboring villages waging bloody wars along the dikes, or 
on the canals, before they learned the costly lesson of coopera- 
tion. Such hostile action, cutting the dams and destroying 

1 The word " state" is commonly used in history not in the sense in which 
we call Massachusetts a state, but rather in that sense in which we call Eng- 
land or the whole United States a state. That is, the word means a people, 
living in some definite place, with a supreme government of its own. 



20 



BRONZE AGE " MEN IN EGYPT 



the reservoirs year by year, was ruinous. From an early period, 
men in the Nile valley must have felt the need of agreement 
and of political union — as men the world over are beginning to 
feel it now. 

Accordingly, before history begins, the multitudes of villages 
had combined into about forty petty states. Each one ex- 
tended from side to side of the valley and a few miles up and 
down the river; and each was ruled by a "king." Then the 
same forces which had worked to unite villages into states 
tended to combine the many small states into a few larger ones. 
After centuries of conflict, Menes, prince of Memphis, united 




Boatmen Fighting on the Nile. — Egyptian Relief ; i from Maspero. 

the petty principalities around him into the kingdom of Lower 
Egypt. In like manner Thebes became the capital of a kingdom 
of Upper Egypt. About the year 3400 before Christ, the two 
kingdoms were united into one. 

The king was worshiped as a god by the mass of the people. 
His title, Pharaoh, means The Great House, — as the title of 
the supreme ruler of Turkey in modern, times has been The 
Sublime Porte (Gate). The title implied that the ruler was to 
be a refuge for his people. 

The pharaoh became the absolute owner of the soil, in return 
for protecting it by dikes and reservoirs. This ownership helped 
to make him absolute master of the inhabitants also. His 
authority was limited only by the power of the priests and by 

1 A relief is a piece of sculpture in which the figures are only partly cut 
away from the solid rock. 



CLASSES OF PEOPLE 



21 



the necessity of keeping ambitious nobles friendly (Davis' 
Readings, I, No. 2). Part of the land he kept in his own hands, 
to be cultivated by peasants under the direction of royal 
stewards ; but the greater portion he parceled out among 
the nobles and temples. 

In return for the land granted to him, a noble was bound to The nobles 
pay certain amounts of produce, and to lead a certain number 
of soldiers to war. Within his domain, he was a petty monarch : 
he executed justice, levied his own taxes, kept up his own army. 
Like the king, he held part of his land in his own hands, while 
other parts he let out to smaller nobles. 

About a third of the land was turned over by the king to the The priests 
temples to support the worship of the gods. This land became 




Shoemakers. — Egyptian relief from the monuments ; from Maspero. 

the property of the priests. The priests were also the scholars of 
Egypt, and the pharaoh took most of his high officials from them. 

The peasants tilled the soil, and were not unlike the peasants The 
of modern Egypt. They rented small "farms," — hardly P^^^^^^ts 
more than garden plots, — for which they paid at least a third 
of the produce to the landlord. This left too Httle for a family ; 
and they eked out a livelihood by day labor on the land of the 
nobles and priests. For this work they were paid a small part 
of the produce. 

In the towns there was an aristocratic middle class, — mer 
chants, shopkeepers, physicians, builders, artisans, notaries. 

1 To draw up business papers, record transfers of property, and so on. 



Town aris- 
tocracy and 
proletariat 



22 



"BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT 



Below these were the unskilled laborers. This class was some- 
times driven to a strike by hunger. Maspero, a famous 
French scholar in Egyptian history, describes one as it is shown 
on the monuments : 

The workmen turn to the overseer, saying: "We are perishing of 
hunger, and there are stiU eighteen days before the next month " (when 
the next wages would be due). The latter makes profuse promises; 

but, when nothing comes of 
them, the workmen will not 
listen to him longer. They 
leave their work and gather 
in a public meeting. The 
overseer hastens after them, 
with the police, . . . urging 
upon the leaders a return. 
But the workmen only say : 
"We wiU not return. Make 
it clear to your superiors down 
below there." The official 
who reports the matter to the 
authorities seems to think the 
complaints weU founded, for 
he says, "We went to hear 
them, and they spoke true 
words to us." 



The son usually followed 
the father's occupation ; 
but there was no law (as 
in some Oriental countries) 
to prevent his passing into 
a different class. Some- 
times the son of a poor 
herdsman rose to wealth 
and power. Such advance 

This learned profession 




Portrait Statue of Amten, a "self- 
made" noble of 3200 B.C. This is on2 
of the oldest portrait statues in the 
world. 



was most easily open to the scribes 
was recruited from the brightest boys of the middle and lower 
classes. Most of the scribes found clerical work only; but 
from the ablest ones the nobles chose confidential secretaries 



CLASSES OF PEOPLE 



23 



and stewards ; and some of these, who showed special abihty, 
were promoted by the pharaohs to the highest dignities in the 
land. Such men founded new families and reinforced the ranks 
of the nobility. 

The soldiers were an important class with many special Soldiers 
privileges. Each soldier held a farm of some eight acres, — 
four or five times the size of an ordinary peasant's farm. He 
was free from taxes, and he was kept under arms only when his 
services were needed. Besides this regular soldiery, the peas- 
antry were called out upon occasion, for war or for garrisons. 

There was also a large body of officials, organized in many Officials 
grades. Urdil the seventh century B.C. the Egyptians had no 
money. Thus the immense royal revenues, as well as all debts 
between private men, had to be collected "in kind." The 
tax-collectors and treasurers had to receive geese, ducks, cattle, 
grain, wine, oil, metals, jewels, — " all that the heavens give, 
all that the earth produces, all that the Nile brings from its 
mysterious sources," as one inscription puts it. To do this 
called for an army of royal officials. For a like reason, the 
great nobles needed a large class of trustworthy servants. 

Egyptian society, then, had at the top an aristocracy of several Social 
elements : (1) the nobles ; (2) the powerful and learned priest- ^arized 
hood, whose influence almost equaled that of the pharaoh 
himself ; (3) scribes and physicians ; (4) a privileged soldiery ; 
and (5) a mass of privileged officials of many grades, from the 
greatest rulers next to the pharaoh, down to petty tax collectors 
and the stewards of private estates. Some of these belonged 
to a middle class. Next below there was a "lower middle class," 
of shopkeepers and artisans, whose life ranged from comfort 
to a grinding misery. Then, at the base of society, was a large 
mass of toilers on the land, weighted down by all the other 
classes. 

For the well-to-do, life was a very delightful thing, filled with Life of the 
active employment and varied with many pleasures. Their ^®^ ^ 
homes were roomy houses with a wooden frame plastered over 
with sun-dried clay. Light and air entered at the many latticed 



24 "BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT 

windows, where, however, curtains of brilliant hues shut out 
the occasional sand storms from the desert. About the house 
stretched a large high-walled garden with artificial fish-ponds 
gleaming among the palm trees. 

The position of women was better than in modern Oriental 
countries. The poor man's wife spim and wove, and ground 




Egyptian Noble Hunting Waterfowl with a "throw-stick" or boomer- 
ang. The wife accompanies her husband, and the boat contains also a 
"decoy" bird. The wild birds rise from a mass of papyrus reeds. — 
From an Egyptian tomb painting. 

grain into meal in a stone bowl with another stone. Among 
the upper classes, the wife was the companion of the man. 
She was not shut up in a harem or confined strictly to house- 
hold duties ; she appeared in company and at public ceremonies. 
She possessed equal rights at law ; and sometimes great queens 
ruled upon the throne. In no other country, until modern 
times, do pictures of happy home life play so large a part. 



MISERY OF THE POOR 



25 



There were few slaves in Egypt ; but the condition of the great Life of the 
mass of the people fell little short of practical slavery. Toilers ^°°^ 
on the canals, and on the pyramids and other vast works that 
have made Egypt famous, were kept to their labor by the whip. 
"Man has a back," was a favorite proverb. The monuments 
always picture the overseers with a stick, and often show it in 
use. The people thought of a beating as a natural incident in 
their daily work. 

The peasants did not live in the country, as our farmers do. 
They were crowded into the villages and the squalid quarters 
of the towns, with the other poorer classes. The house of a poor 




Levying the Tax. — An Egyptian relief from the monuments ; from 

Maspero. 



man was a mud hovel of only one room. Such huts were 
separated from one another merely by one mud partition, and 
were built in long rows, facing upon narrow crooked alleys 
filled with filth. A "plague of flies," like that described in the 
Old Testament, was natural enough; and only the extremely 
dry air kept down that and worse pestilences. Hours of toil 
were from dawn to dark. Usually the peasants were careless 
and gay, petting the cattle and singing at their work. Probably 
they were quite as well off as the like class has been in Egypt 
or Russia during the past century. Their chief fear was of the 
royal taxes, which were exacted harshly. The peasant was 
held responsible for them with all that he owned, even with his 
body. An Egyptian writer of about 1400 b.c. exclaims in pity : 



26 



"BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT 



"Dost thou not recall the picture of the farmer, when the tenth of 
his grain is levied ? . . . There are swarms of rats in the fields ; the 
grasshoppers ahght there; the cattle devour; the httle birds pilfer; 
and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of what remains upon the 
ground, it is carried off by robbers. The thongs, moreover, which 
bind the plowshare and the beam are worn out, and the team [of cows] 
has died at the plow. It is then that the scribe steps out of the boat 
at the landing place to levy the tithe, and there come the keepers of 
the doors of the granary with cudgels and the Negroes with ribs of 
palm-leaf [very effective whips], crying: 'Come now, corn!' There' 
is none, and they throw the cultivator full length upon the ground ; 
bound, dragged to the canal, they fling him in, head first." [This 
is probably a figurative way of saying that he was forced to work out 
his tax on the canals.] 



II. ART, INDUSTRY, CHARACTER 

For a thousand years (3400 to 2400 B.C.), the capital remained 
at Memphis. This period is known as that of the "Old King- 
dom.'^ Its kings are remembered best for ihe pyramids, which 
they built for their tombs. The pyramids are merely exag- 
gerated developments, in stone, of earth burial mounds such as 
some American Indians and many other Stone Age men have 
erected for their chieftains' graves. But the immense size of 
these buildings In Egypt, and the skill shown in constructing 
them, has always placed them among the wonders of the world. 

The largest is known as the Great Pyramid. It was built 
by King Khufu, known till lately as Cheops, more than 3000 
years B.C., and it is far the most massive building in the world. 
Its base covers thirteen acres, and it rises 481 feet from the 
plain. More than two million huge stone blocks went to make 
it, — more stone than has gone into any other building in the 
world. Some single blocks weigh over fifty tons ; but the 
edges of the blocks that form the faces are so polished, and so 
nicely fitted, that the joints can hardly be detected ; while the 
interior chambers, and long, sloping passages between them, are 
built with such skill that, notwithstanding the immense weight 
above them, there has been no perceptible settling of the walls 
in the lapse of five thousand years. 



PYRAMIDS AND IRRIGATION 



27 



Herodotus, a Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., traveled 
in Egypt and learned all that the priests of his day could tell 
him regarding these wonders. He tells us that it took thirty 
years to build the Great Pyramid, — ten of those years going 
to piling the vast mounds of earth, up which the mighty stones 
were to be dragged into place, — which mounds had afterwards 




Sphinx and Pyramids. — From a photograph. (The human head of the 
sphinx is supposed to have the magnified features of some pharaoh. It is 
set upon the body of a Hon, as a symbol of power.) 

to be removed. During those thirty years, relays of a hundred 
thousand men were kept at the toil, each relay for three months 
at a stretch. Other thousands, of course, had to toil through a 
lifetime of labor to feed these workers on a monument to a 
monarch's vanity. All the labor was performed by mere human 
strength : the Egyptians of that day had no beasts of burden, 
and no machinery, such as we have, for moving great weights 
with ease. 

The vain and cruel pyramid builders were finally overthrown 



28 



"BRONZE AGE" MEN IN EGYPT 



by a rebellion of Upper Egypt ; and the new line of kings took 
Thebes for their capital. The next 400 years (2400-2000 B.C.), 
known as the Middle Kingdom, is the greatest age of Egypt. 
Its chief glory was a vast elaboration of the remarkable irriga- 
tion system. The pharaohs continued, of course, to care for 
the old dykes and embankments that kept the floods from the 



And the 

irrigation 

system 




-■UeaitSatXev^^- 



SCALE OF FEET 



— ^I&an Sea Iieuel- 



Vertical Section of the Great Pyramid, Looking West, showing 
passages. 

A Entrance passage. F Queen's chamber. K King's chamber. 

B A later opening. • G G Grand Gallery. M N Ventilating chambers. 

D First ascending passage. H Antechamber. O Subterranean chamber. 

E Horizontal passage. I Coffer. P Well, so called. 

R R R Probable extent to which the native rock is employed to assist the masonry of the 
building. 

towns and gardens ; and they now added a wonderful system of 
reservoirs — of which Lake Moeris is the great example. 

On the one hand, tens of thousands of acres of marsh were 
drained and made fit for rich cultivation; on the other hand, 
artificial lakes were built at various places, to collect and hold 
the surplus water of the yearly inundation. Then, by an in- 



LIFE AND WORK 29 

tricate network of ditches and "gates" (much Hke the irrigation 
ditches of some of our western States to-day), the water was 
distributed during the dry months as it was needed. The 
government opened and closed the main ditches, as seemed 
best to it; and its officers saw that each farm was given its 
share of water in its "farm ditch." From this main ditch of 
his farm, the farmer himself then carried the water in smaller 
water courses to one part or another of his acres, — these 
small ditches gradually growing smaller and smaller, until, by 
moving a little mud with the foot, he could turn the water one 
way or another at his will. Ground so cultivated was divided 
into square beds, surrounded by raised borders of earth, so that 
the water could be kept in or out of each bed. 

So extensive were these irrigation works in very early times 
that more soil was cultivated, and a larger population main- 
tained, than in any modern period until English control was 
established in the country a short time ago. 

The main industry was farming. The leading grains were 
wheat, barley, and sesame. Other food crops were beans, 
peas, lettuce, radishes, melons, cucumbers, and onions. Grapes, 
too, were grown in great quantities, and made into a light wine. 
Clover was raised for the cattle, and flax for the linen cloth, 
which was the main material for clothing. A little cotton, also, 
was cultivated ; and large flocks of sheep furnished wool. 

Herodotus says that seed was merely scattered broadcast on 
the moist soil as the water receded each November, and then 
trampled in by cattle and goats and pigs. But the pictures on 
the monuments show that, in parts of Egypt anyway, a Hght 
wooden plow, drawn by cows, was used to stir the ground (cut 
on p. 11). Even the large farms were treated almost like 
gardens ; and the yield was enormous, — reaching the rate of 
a hundredfold for grain. Long after her greatness had de- 
parted, Egypt remained "the granary of the Mediterranean 
lands." 

Besides the plow, the farmer's only tools were a short, crooked 
hoe (the use of which bent him almost double) and the sickle. 



'30 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



The grain was cut with this last implement ; then carried in 
baskets to a threshing floor, — and trodden out by cattle, 
which were driven round and round, while the drivers sang, — 

"Tread, tread, tread out the grain. 
Tread for yourselves, for yourselves. 
Measures for the master; measures for yourselves." 

An Egyptian barnyard contained many animals familiar to 
us (cows, sheep, goats, scrawny pigs much like the wild hog, 
geese, ducks, and pigeons), and also a number of others like 
antelopes, gazelles, and storks. Some of these it proved im- 
possible to tame profitably. We must remember that men had 
to learn by careful experiment, through many generations of animal 
life, which animals it paid best to domesticate. The hen was not 
known. The horse was introduced from Asia about 1600 B.C., 
but he was never common enough to use in agriculture or as a 
draft animal. 

During the flood periods cattle were fed in stalls upon clover 
and wheat straw. The monuments picture some exciting scenes 
when a rapid rise of the Nile forced the peasants to remove their 
flocks and herds hurriedly, through the surging waters, from 
usual grazing grounds. Veal, mutton, and antelope flesh were 
the common meats of the rich. The poor lived mainly on vege- 
tables and goats' milk. 

During most of Egypt's three thousand years of greatness, 
exchange in her market places ivas by barter. A peasant with 
wheat or onions to sell squatted by his basket, while would-be 
customers offeredhim earthenware, vases, fans, or other objects 
with which they had come to buy, but which perhaps he did not 
want. In the closing periods of Egyptian history, the people 
came to use rings of gold and silver a little, somewhat as we 
use money ; but such rings had to be weighed each time they 
changed hands. 

In spite of this handicap, the Egyptians carried on extensive 
trade. Especially did the great Theban pharaohs of the " Middle 
Kingdom" encourage commerce, explore distant regions, de- 



TRADE AND INDUSTRY 



31 



velop copper mines in the Sinai peninsula of Arabia, and build 
roads. One of them even opened a canal from the eastern 
mouth of the Nile to the Red Sea, so establishing a continuous 
water route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. 
In that day, Egyptian merchants sailed to Crete on the north 
and to distant parts of Ethiopia on the south, while an inscrip- 
tion of about 2000 B.C. describes a ship bringing from the coast 
of Arabia "fragrant woods, heaps of myrrh, ebony and pure 
ivory, green gold, cinnamon, incense, cosmetics, apes, monkeys, 




A Market Scene. — An Egyptian Relief. The admirable description of 
Egyptian markets in Davis' Readings (I, No. 7) is based in part upon this 
sculpture. 

dogs, and panther skins." Some of these things must have 
been gathered from distant parts of Eastern Asia. So far as 
we know, the Egyptians were the first men to go down to the 
sea in ships, the first, indeed, to build sea-going ships at all. 

To pay for these precious products of distant countries, the Manufac- 
Egyptian merchant exported the surplus products of the skilled *"^®® 
artisans at home. This class included weavers, blacksmiths, 
goldsmiths, coppersmiths, cabinet-makers, upholsterers, glass 
blowers, potters, shoemakers, tailors, armorers, and almost as 
many other trades as are to be found among us to-day. In many 
of these occupations, the workers possessed a marvelous dex- 



32 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



terity, and were masters of processes that are now unknown. 
The weavers in. particular produced dehcate and exquisite 
linen, almost as fine as silk, and the workers in glass and gold 
were famous for their skill. Jewels were imitated in colored 
glass so artfully that only an expert to-day can detect the 
fraud by the appearance. Modern workers in stone, even with 
our steel drills driven by steam, cannot excel the nicety and 
precision of the Egyptian stoneworkers with their hand tools 
of bronze. Beautiful bowls and vases, and other sorts of 
pottery, were worked, no longer by hand, but on the potter's 





:ii^fe"W 



.Ji 



Sculptors at work on colossal figures. — From an Egyptian relief. 

wheel — another Egyptian invention — and burned, not by 
an open fire, but evenly in closed brick ovens. 

The Egyptians wrote religious books, poems, histories, 
travels, novels, orations, treatises on morals, scientific works, 
geographies, cook-books, catalogues, and collections of fairy 
stories — among the last a tale of an Egyptian Cinderella 
with her fairy glass slipper. On the oldest monuments, writ- 
ing had advanced from mere pictures to a rebus stage (p. 16). 
This early writing was used mainly by the priests, and so the 
strange characters are called hieroglyphs ("priests' writing"). 
They are " a delightful assemblage of birds, snakes, men, tools, 
stars, and beasts," used, not for objects merely, but rather as 
sound symbols, each for a syllable. Some of these signs grew 
into real "letters," or signs of single sounds. If the Egyptians 



LEARNING AND ART 33 

had kept these last, and dropped all the rest, they would have 
had a true alphabet. But they never took this final step. 
To the last their writing remained a curious mixture of hun- 
dreds of signs of things and ideas and syllables, and of a few 
single sounds. 

The oldest inscriptions were cut in stone. But very soon the The papyrus 
Egyptians invented "paper." They took papyrus reeds, which 

Lii:«3gi=mgi*ikiSu;M?o",4iyffr^=siltrrr;ia*M^5b^Tils5:Tii 

Part of the Rosetta Stone (page 34), containing hieroglyphs first 
deciphered. The stone is now in the British Museum. 

grew abundantly in the Nile? split the stems down the middle, 
laid the slices, flat side up, in two layers, one crossing the other, 
and pressed them into a firm yellowish sheet, somewhat as 
we make our "paper" from wood pulp. On such sheets, they 
wrote with a pointed reed in black or red ink. The dry air 

Part op Above Inscription (last line) on a large scale. That part within 
the curved line ("cartouch") was known, by Egyptian custom, to be 
the name of a pharaoh, and became the starting point for study. 

of Egyptian tombs has preserved great numbers of buried 
papyrus rolls to our time. In the rapid writing on this " paper," 
strokes were run together, and so the stiff hieroglyphs of the 
monuments were gradually modified into a running script, 
differing from the older characters somewhat as our script 
differs from print. 



34 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



Many Egyptian inscriptions and papyrus rolls had long 
been known to European scholars ; but until a century ago no 
one could read them. About 1800 a.d. some French soldiers, 
while digging trenches near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, 
found a curious slab of black rock covered with three inscrip- 
tions, each in its own kind of writing. The top one was in the 
ancient hieroglyphics of the pyramids ; then came one in the 
later Egyptian script (likewise unknown) ; and at the bottom 
was an inscription in Greek. A French scholar, ChampoUion, 
who had been working for years, with small success, in trying 
to decipher the hieroglyphics, guessed shrewdly that these 
three inscriptions told the same story. In 1822 he proved 
this true. Then, by means of the Greek, he found the mean- 
ing of the other characters, and so had a key to the language 
and writing of old Egypt. The famous "Rosetta stone" made 
dumb ages speak once more. 

Egyptian science, too, was "the gift of the Nile." After an 
inundation, it was often needful to survey the land, and this 
led to the skill of the early Egyptians in geometry. And the 
need of fixing in advance the exact time of the inundation 
directed attention to the true "year," and so to astronomy. 
Great advance was made in both these studies. We, who learn 
glibly from books and diagrams the results of this early labor, 
can hardly understand how hard was the task of those first 
scientists. Uncivilized peoples count time by "moons" or by 
"winters." To fix the exact length of the year (the time in 
which the sun apparently passes from a given point in the 
heavens, through its path, back again to that point) requires 
long and patient and skillful observation, and no little knowl- 
edge. Indeed, to find out that there is such a thing as a "year" 
is no simple matter. Go out into the night, and lo6k upon the 
heavens, with its myriads of twinkling points of Hght, and then 
try to imagine how the first scientists, without being told by any 
one else, learned to map out the paths of the heavenly bodies. 

The Egyptians understood the revolution of the earth and 
planets around the sun, and adopted a "calendar" with a year 



art 



LEARNING, ART, RELIGION 35 

of 365 days/ divided into twelve months (moons) of 30 days 
each, with five added feast-days. This is the direct source of. 
our calendar. They also divided the day into twelve double 
hours, and invented both a water-clock and a shadow-clock 
(or dial) to measure the passage of the hours. 

In arithmetic the Egyptians dealt in numbers to millions, with 
a notation like that used later by the Romans. Thus, 3423 was 
represented by the Romans : M M M C ' C C C XX III 
and by the Egyptians: ZXZ (®(5©6FI1' 

Amazing skill was shown in architecture, sculpture, and Egyptian 
painting. Aside from the pyramids, the most famous buildings 
were the gigantic temples of the gods. In these we find the 
first use of columns, arranged often in long colonnades. The 
Egyptians understood the principle of the arch, and they used it 
sometimes in their private mansions ; but in the huge temples 
the roofs and ceilings were formed always by laying immense 
flat slabs of rock across from column to column (or from square 
pier to pier). The result is an impression of stupendous power, 
but not of surpassing beauty. 

On the walls and columns, and within the pyramid tombs, 
we find long bands of pictures ("reliefs") cut into the stone 
(cf. note on p. 20). Often these represent historical scenes, 
the story of which is told in detail by inscriptions above or below 
the band of sculpture. The Egyptians did not understand 
"perspective," and so in such carving and drawing they could 
not represent one figure behind another, or give the sense of 
varying distances. All the figures appear on one plane, and 
are drawn on one scale. (Compare the reliefs on pp. 20-40 
with the Roman relief on p. 383.) In other respects the 
Egyptian work is exceedingly lifelike. 

In carving complete statues, the ignorance of perspective did 
not injure the effect. The Egyptians, accordingly, excelled 
here, especially in portrait statues, small or life size. They 

1 Later they found that their year was too short by nearly a quarter of a 
day ; but the leap-year arrangement which their scholars then invented 
never came into general use in ancient Egypt. 



36 



ANCIENT EGYPT 




Ruins of the "Hall of Columns" in the Temple of Karnak ,(1500 
B.C.). This temple was a maze of huge halls and courts joined by iotty 
corridors. This one hall had 134 columns, the central ones being bb 
feet high. The "capitals" do not show clearly in this cut, but many 
of them are exceedingly beautiful, shaped like vast inverted bells and 
ornamented with carvings of the lotus in full bloom. A full company 
of soldiers might stand upon one of those capitals. (Compare these ruins 
with Stonehenge, p. 12.) 



RELIGION AND MORALS 37 

were fond, too, of making colossal statues, like the Sphinx, 
which, however unnatural, have a gloomy and overwhelming 
grandeur — in keeping with the melancholy desert that stretches 
about them. 

The scenes carved on temple walls, and the walls themselves, 
within and without, were painted skillfully in brilliant hues 
faithful to nature. Inside the rock-tombs, such painting has 
lasted with perfect freshness. Elsewhere all trace of color has 
long faded away — as the rock paintings soon do on exposure to 
the air. 

There was a curious mixture of religions. Each family wor- Religion 
shiped its ancestors. Such ancestor worship is found, indeed, 
among all primitive peoples, along with a belief in evil spirits 
and malicious ghosts. There was also a worship of animals. 
Cats, dogs, bulls, crocodiles, and many other animals were 
sacred. To injure one of these "gods," even by accident, was 
to incur the murderous fury of the people. Probably this wor- 
ship was a degraded kind of ancestor worship known as totemism, 
which is found among many peoples. North American Indians 
of a wolf clan or a bear clan — with a fabled wolf or bear for 
an ancestor — must on no account injure the ancestral animal 
or "totem." i In Egypt, however, the worship of animals 
became more widely spread, and took on grosser features, than 
has ever been the case elsewhere. Above all this, there was a 
nature worship with countless deities and demigods representing 
sun, moon, river, wind, storm, trees, and stones. Each village 
and town had its special nature god to protect it ; and the gods 
of the great capitals became national deities. 

With the better classes this nature worship mounted some- 
times to a lo/ty and pure worship of one God. "God," say 
some of the inscriptions, " is a spirit : no man knoweth his 
form," and again, — "He is the creator of the heavens and 
the earth and all that is therein." These lofty thoughts never 
spread far among the people ; but a few thinkers in Egypt rose 

^ Students who know Cooper's Last of the Mohicans will recall an illustra- 
tion of totemism. 



38 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



to them earlier than the Hebrew prophets did. The following 
hymn to Aten (the Sun-disk), symbol of Light and Life, was 
written by a king of the fifteenth century B.C., and it shows 
that he thought of the creator as a tender father of all creatures. 

"Thy appearing is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, 
O Uving Aten, the beginning of Ufe ! . . . 
Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. 
Thy beams encompass all lands which thou hast made. 
Thou bindest them with thy love. . . . 
The birds fly in their marshes — 
Lifting their wings to adore thee. . . . 
The small bird in the egg, sounding within the shell — 
Thou givest it breath within the egg. . . . 
How many are the things which thou hast made ! 
Thou Greatest the land by thy will, thou alone. 
With peoples, herds, and flocks. . . . 
Thou givest to every vian his place, thou framest his life." 




Sculptured Funeral Couch, representing the soul crouching by the corpse. 

The idea of a future life was held in two or three forms. Nearly 
all savage peoples believe that after death the body remains the 
home of the soul, or at least that the soul lives on in a pale, 
shadowy existence near the tomb. If the body be not pre- 
served, or if it be not given proper burial, then, it is thought, 
the soul becomes a wandering ghost, restless and harmful to 
men. 



RELIGION AND MORALS 



39 



The early Egyptians held such a belief, and their practice of 
embalming ^ the body before burial was connected with it. 
They wished to preserve the body as the home for the soul. 
In the early tombs, too, there are always found dishes in which 
had been placed food and drink for the ghost.^ Later, the 
offerings were sometimes represented by pictures ! 

These practices continued through all ancient Egyptian 
history. But upon some such basis as this there finally grew 
up, among the better 
classes, a belief in a truer 
immortality. According 
to these more advanced 
thinkers, the dead lived 
in a distant Elysium, 
where they had all the 
pleasures of life without 
its pains. This haven, 
however, was only for 
those ghosts who, on ar- 
rival, should be declared 
worthy — because of their 
good lives — by the 
"Judges of the Dead." 
Other souls were thought 
to perish. 

The following noble extract comes from the "Repudiation Moral 
of Sins." This was a statement which the Egyptian believed standards 
he ought to be able to say truthfully before the "Judges of the 
Dead." It shows a keen sense of duty to one's fellow men. 




A Tomb Painting : i )!i crings to the dead. 



1 "Embalming" is a process of preparing a dead body with drugs and 
spices, so as to prevent decay. The corpses of the wealthy, so preserved, 
were also swathed in many layers of linen clothes before being laid away. 
A corpse so preserved and wrapped is called a mummy. 

2 After these 6000 years of different faiths, the Egyptian peasant still 
buries food and drink with his dead. Such customs last long after the 
ideas on which they were based have faded ; hut there must always have 
been, some live idea in them at first. 



40 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



which would be highly honorable to any religion, and it is the 
first record of the idea that a good life ought to win reward 
hereafter. 

"Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of 
Truth and Justice ! . . . I have not committed iniquity against men ! 
I have not oppressed the poor ! . . . I have not laid labor upon any 
free man beyond that which he wrought for himself ! . . . I have not 
caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master ! I have not starved 
any man, I have not made any to weep, ... / have not pulled down 







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Weighing the Soul in the scales of truth before the gods of the dead. — 
Egyptian reUef ; after Maspero. (The figures with animal heads are 
gods and their messengers. The human forms represent the dead who 
are being led to judgment.) 

the scale of the balance ! I have not falsified the beam of the balance ! 
I have not taken away the milk from the mouths of sucklings. . . . 

"Grant that he may come unto you — he that hath not lied or 
borne false witness, . . . he that hath given bread to the hungry and 
drink to him that was athirst, and that hath clothed the naked with gar- 
ments." 

Some other declarations in this statement run : " I have not 
blasphemed"; "I have not stolen"; "I have not slain any 
man treacherously"; "I have not made false accusation"; 
"I have not eaten my heart with envy." These five contain 



EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 41 

the substance of half of the Ten Commandments, — hundreds 
of years before Moses brought the tables of stone to the Children 
of Israel. Like ideas of duty appear in many other inscrip- 
tions. (Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 9 and 10.) 

Such inscriptions show that the Egyptians were a kindly, A kindly 
moral, conscientious people. Says Professor Petrie, the great P®°P^® 
English authority, "The Egyptian . . . sought out a fa,ir and 
noble life. . . . His aim was to be an easy, good-natured, 
quiet gentleman, and to make life as agreeable as he could to 
all about him." 

III. EGYPT AND OTHER LANDS 

Egypt was so difficult to get into that, when a large state had Protected 

once been formed there, it was almost safe from attack. To the . ^"7 
' vasion by 

south were the Abyssinians, a brave and warlike people ; but geography 
they were cut off from Egypt by a twelve-day march through a 
desert and by impassable cataracts in the Nile. Trade cara- 
vans and small bands might travel from, one country to the 
other ; but armies could do so only with the greatest difficulty. 
To the west lay the Sahara — an immense inhospitable tract, 
peopled by small tribes roaming from oasis to oasis. On the 
north and east lay the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. 

Thus with sides and rear protected, Egypt faced Asia across Egypt and 
the narrow Isthmus of Suez. And here, too, the region border- ^"^ 
ing Egypt was mainly desert. . But a little to the north, between 
the mountains and the sea, lay Syria, ^ a narrow strip of habitable 
ground and a nursery of warlike peoples. Here dwelt the 
Phoenicians, Philistines, Canaanites, Hebrews, Moabites, and 
Hittites, whom we read of in the Bible. 

Mountain ranges and rivers divided these peoples into many 
small, mutually hostile states ; and so Syria offered a tempting 
field to Egyptian military ambition. The Theban pharaohs of 
2400-2000 B.C. (p. 28) laid the region waste in long wars, and 

1 The term "Syria" is used with a varying meaning. In a narrow sense, 
as in this passage, it means only the coast region. In a broader use, it 
applies to all the country between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. 



42 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



The " New 
Empire " 



finally made themselves its masters. Then, about 1700 B.C., 
Egypt was itself invaded and conquered by a strange race of 
nomads from the neighboring Arabian desert. From the name 
of their rulers we know these invaders as Hyksos (Shepherds). 
They introduced the horse into Egypt. This animal was re- 
served for war (p. 30). 
Thenceforward pharaohs 
and nobles no longer 
marched to war, as in the 
earlier reliefs, but are pic- 
tured in chariots. 

A century later, the 
Hyksos were expelled by 
a new line of native pha- 
raohs at Thebes. These 
are known as the monarchs 
of the "New Empire." 
The long struggle with 
the invading Hyksos had 
fastened militarism disas-^ 
trously upon the industrial 
Egyptians, and the New 
Empire is known chiefly 
for its conquests in war 
(map opposite). 

At its extreme north, the 
fertile Syrian strip bends 
south again in a sharp 
crescent around the Arabian 
desert down the course of 
the Euphrates and Tigris. 
On these rivers, so much like their own Nile, the Egyptian 
conquerors found a civilization not much inferior to their own, 
and almost as old. The two first homes of civilization, the 
valleys of the Nile and of the Euphrates, were only some 800 
miles apart in a straight line ; but along the two legs of the 




Rame«i;s II. A portrait statue, now in 
the Turin Museum of Antiquities. 
Rameses was one of the two most 
famous conquering pharaohs of the 
New Empire. 



EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 



43 



triangle — the only practicable route — the distance was much 
greater. That whole district was soon covered by a network 
of roads. These were garrisoned here and there by Egyptian 
fortresses ; and along them, for centuries, there passed hurrying 
streams of officials, couriers, and merchants. 




But history teaches that " he who takes the sword shall perish The fall of 
by the sword." The ■population of Egypt was drained of its „^l^^^^^ 
manhood by long wars, and impoverished by heavy war taxation. 
Finally the pharaohs could no longer defend their distant fron- 
tiers, and withdrew within the old borders of Egypt. In 
particular, they found it impossible to war longer with the 



44 



ANCIENT EGYPT 



A brief 
revival, 
600 B.C. 



Hittites, who, armed with iron weapons, descended from the 
slopes of the Taurus mountains and overthrew Egyptian power 
in Syria. Even at home, the government was noW weak and 
troubled by various invasions ; and, in 672, Egypt became 
subject to Assyria (p. 50). 

Twenty years later, Psammetichus restored Egyptian inde- 
pendence, and became the first of the final line of native pharaohs. 
He had been a military adventurer, and he won his throne 
largely through the aid of mercenary Greek troops. During 

all her earlier greatness, 
however much her traders 
visited foreign lands, 
Egypt had kept herself 
jealousl}^ closed against 
strangers. But Psammet- 
ichus threw open the door 
to foreigners, especially to 
the Greeks, who were just 
coming into notice. Greek 
travelers visited Egypt ; 
large numbers of Greek 
soldiers served! in the 
army ; and a Greek colony 
at Naucratis was given 
special privileges. Indeed, 
Sais, the new capital of Psammetichus and his son, thronged 
with Greek adventurers. This was the time when Egypt "ful- 
filled her mission among the nations." She "had lit the torch 
of civilization" ages before: now she passed it on to the 
Western world through this vigorous new race. 

Neco, son of Psammetichus, is remembered for his fine attempt 
to reopen the ancient canal from the Nile to the Red Sea (p. 31). 
This failed ; but Neco did find another sea route from the Red 
to the Mediterranean. One of his ships sailed around Africa, 
down the east coast, returning three years later through the 
Mediterranean. Herodotus (p. 27), who tells us the story, adds : 




Sculptured Head of Thutmosis III 
(about 1470 B.C.), who in twelve great 
campaigns carried Egyptian arms from 
the Isthmus to Nineveh. 



EXCHANGES INDUSTRY FOR MILITARISM 45 

"On their return the sailors reported (others may beheve them Voyage 
but I will not) that in sailing from east to west around Africa ^^°^^^ 
they had the sun on their right hand." This report is good 
proof to us that the story of the sailors was true.' 

This voyage closes Egyptian history. In 525 the land be- 
came subject to Persia (p. 67), and native rule has never been 
restored. 

" Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 
HaK-sunk, a shattered visage lies. 

And on the pedestal, these words appear : 

' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. 

Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair ! ' 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 

The lone and level sands stretch far away." — Shelley. 

Exercises. — 1. Make and compare lists of the things we owe to 
Egypt. 2. What can you learn from those extracts upon Egypt in 
Davis' Readings, which have not been referred to in this chapter? (If 
the class have enough of those valuable little books in their hands, this 
topic may make aU or part of a day's lesson ; if only a copy or two is 
in the library, one student may well make a short report to the class, 
with brief readings.) 3. Do you regard the Great Pyramid or Lake 
Moeris or the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea or the conquest of 
Syria as the truest proof of Egyptian greatness? 4. Can you see any 
connection between the cheap food of the Nile valley and its place as 
an early home of civihzation? Could you suggest a more just division 
of the leisure that resulted from that cheap food? 5. Students who 
wish to read further upon ancient Egypt will find the titles of three or 
four of the best books for their purpose in the Appendix, — Baikie, 
Breasted, Hommel, or Myers. If the school has a stereopticon for 
use in history classes, and can afford the expense, the Underwood and 
Underwood series of Egyptian views will be found very instructive ; 
edited by Breasted, Egypt through the Stereoscope. The following 
numbers are especiaUy good : 27, 29, 31, 42, 45, 48, 52, 53, 57, 69, 89. 

1 If the student does not see why, let him trace the route on a globe, and 
see whether he can understand the story. 



CHAPTER III 



THE MEN OF THE EUPHRATES AND TIGRIS 



The land 
of the two 
rivers 



The three 
divisions 



Chaldeans 
and 

Assyrians 



I. LAND, PEOPLE, AND STATES 

Between the sands of Arabia and the rugged plateaus of 
central Asia, there lies a patch of luxuriant vegetation stretch- 
ing from the Persian Gulf to the Armenian mountains. This 
oasis is the work of the Euphrates ("great" river) and the 
Tigris ("swift" river). Rising on opposite slopes of snow- 
capped mountains, these streams approach each other in ma- 
jestic sweeps until they form a common valley ; then they flow 
in parallel channels for most of their course, uniting just before 
they reach the Persian Gulf. 

The valley had three parts. (1) Like the delta of the Nile, 
the lower part had been built up out of alluvial soil carried out, 
in the course of ages, into the sea. This district was about as 
large as Egypt and is known as Babylonia, or Chaldea. To the 
north, the rich Chaldean plain rises into a broad table-land. 

(2) The fertile half of this, on the Tigris side, is ancient Assyria. 

(3) The western part of the upper valley (Mesopotamia) is 
more rugged, and is important mainly because it makes part 
of the great curved road, around the Arabian desert, from 
Chaldea to Egypt (p. 42). 

The Tigris district is not suited for irrigation, but it has a 
reasonable amount of rainfall. Chaldea' s fertility loas kept 
up by the annual overflow of the Euphrates, regulated, like the 
Nile's, by dikes, reservoirs, and canals. 

The people of Chaldea and of Assyria differed widely. The 
first civilization in the southern district was built up by a race 
whom scholars call Sumerians. By 4000 B.C., they reached the 
Copper Age and a hieroglyphic stage of writing. Successive 

46 



CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 



47 



waves of conquering invaders from the Arabian desert finally 
established a Semitic language in Chaldea, but the bulk of 
the inhabitants there did not become Semites in blood. They 




Recent Excavation at the Site of Ashur, one of the most ancient cities 
of the district. — From Jastrow's Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria. 

kept mainly the character of the older race, though their old 
speech had become a "dead" language. Before 2000 B.C. 
they had learned the use of Bronze — probably from Egyptian 
traders. 



48 



CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 



Sumerian civilization, however, had not taken so firm a 
hold on the Tigris district ; and the Assyrians did become 

mainly Semitic, — allied to the 
Arabs in blood. The men of the 
south — Chaldeans, or Babyloni- 
ans — were quick-witted, indus- 
trious, gentle, pleasure-loving, 
fond of literature and of peace- 
ful pursuits. The men of the 
north — the hook-nosed, larger- 
framed, fiercer Assyrians — de- 
lighted in blood and gore, and 
had only such arts and learning 
as they could borrow from their 
neighbors. 



The languages of the 
Arabs, Jews, Assyrians, and 
of some other neighboring 
peoples, such as the ancient 
Phoenicians (p. 74), are 
closely related. The whole 
group of such languages is 
called Semitic, and the 
peoples who speak them are 
called Semites (descendants 
of Shem). Similarity of 
languages does not neces- 
sarily prove that the peoples 
are related in blood: more 
commonly it means only 
that their civilizations have 
been derived one from an- 
other. But these Semitic 
races do seem to have had 
a close blood relationship. 




A BABYLONIAlSr BOUNDARY StONE 

of about 2000 B.C. — From Jas- 
trow's Babylonia and Assyria. 
Such stones were placed at each 
corner of a grant of land. The 
inscription records the title, and 
the gods are invoked to witness 
the grant or sale and to punish 
transgressors upon the owner's 
rights. 



FIRST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE 



49 



Just as in early Egypt, so in this double valley, many cities 
waged long wars with one another from an early date. Each 
such city, with its surrounding hamlets and farms, was a little 
"city-state." First Accad and then Ur (both of which we read 
of in the Bible) won control 
over all Chaldea. Later, 
Babylon in Chaldea and 
Nineveh in Assyria became 
the capitals of mighty em- 
pires, i 

About 2150 B.C., a new 
Semitic conqueror, Ham- 
murapi, established himself 
at Babylon, and soon ex- 
tended his rule over the 
whole valley and westward 
even to the Mediterranean. 
This was the First Baby- 
lonian Empire. For hun- 
dreds of years Chaldean 
fashions were copied, Chal- 
dean manufactures were 
used, and Chaldean books 
were read, all over Syria; 
and, ever since, the name 
Babylon has remained a 
symbol for magnificence and 
power. After five or six 
centuries, however, Egypt 
for a time seized most of this Babylonian empire (p. 42). 

In 745 B.C., Nineveh, long subject to Babylon, became her- 
self the seat of an Assyrian Empire, larger and mightier than 
any that had gone before it. The king Sargon carried away the 

1 An empire is properly a state containing many sub-states. Egypt was 
called a kingdom while it was confined to the Nile valley, but an empire when 
its sway extended over Ethiopia and Syria (p. 42). 



City-states 
give way to 
an empire 









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feC^« 








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The Oldest Arch Known (about 4000 
B.C.). This vaulted drain was dis- 
covered a few years ago fifteen feet 
below what had long been supposed 
to be the earliest remains of Baby- 
lonian civilization. It seems to have 
been part of a highly complex drain- 
age system in a crypt of an ancient 
temple. The arch is two feet high. 
The clay pipes, whose forms can be 
seen dimly on the bottom, are eight 
inches in diameter, and lie in two-foot 
joints. — From Hilprecht's Explo- 
rations in Bible Lands. 



Hammurapi 
and the 
Babylonian 
Empire 



The 

Assyrian 
Empire and 

"fright- 
fulness " 



50 



CHALDEANS AND ASSYRIANS 



Ten Tribes of Israel into captivity (722 B.C.)- Sargon's son, 
Sennacherib, subdued Judah ; ^ and Sennacherib's son con- 
quered Egypt (p. 44). Assyrian rule reached out also into the 
new districts of Asia Minor and of Media. 




Every Assyrian energy went to make the army a perfect 
fighting machine. The soldiers were armed with iron weapons 
(adopted from the Hittites (p. 44)), and were equipped with 

1 2 Kings, xviii. For the Assyrian story, see Davis' Readings, I, No. 12. 
Sennacherib, however, is best remembered from the Jewish account of the 
destruction of his army, in an earher expedition, by a sudden plague — 
"smitten by the angel of the Lord." This is the incident referred to in 
Byron's lines : 

"The AssjTian came down like the wolf on the fold. 

And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold . . . 
• Like leaves of the forest when Autumn has blown, 
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown." 



ASSYRIAN FRIGHTFULNESS 



51 



battering rams and great hiu'ling 
engines, to beat down the earth 
walls of unsubmissive cities. The 
transportation and dispersion of a 
conquered nation, with unimagi- 
nable sufferings (as in the case of 
the "Lost Tribes" of Israel), was a 
common practice, to guard against 
rebellion. " Frightfulness " was the 
deliberate policy of the Assyrians, 
to intimidate their enemies ; and 
the rulers exulted fiendishly in de- 
tails of cruelty. Said parts of two 
royal inscriptions : 

" They did not embrace my feet. . . . 
I captured the city. . . . The spoil I 
carried away. . . . [Some of the cap- 
tives] I burned with fire. I cut off the 
hands and feet of some ; I cut off the 
noses, ears, and fingers of others . . . 
I built a pyratnid of the living and a 
pyramid of heads. The city I over- 
threw, dug up, and burned. I annihi- 
lated it." 

"The nobles, as many as had re- 
volted, I flayed. With their skins I 
covered the pyramid [of slaughtered 
citizens]. . . . Some of them / buried 
alive in the midst of the pyramid; others 
round about the pyramid I impaled on 
stakes." 

The wide rule of Assyria was 

short-lived. Her strength was 

Obelisk of Shalmaneser II of 
Assyria (858 b.c). — From Jastrow's Babylonia and Assyria. This is 
a huge black stone, four-faced. The five bands of sculpture shown upon 
the one face in this cut run around the four faces, as do the inscriptions. 
Each band illustrates the conquest by Shalmaneser of a different nation, 
and the inscriptions contain part of the cruel passages recorded on this 
page. This obelisk is the predecessor of the triumphal columns of Roman 
emperors (p. 365). 




Fall of 
Assyria 



52 SECOND BABYLONIAN EMPIRE 

wasted by constant wars abroad, and her industries decayed 
at home. A passionate hatred, too, against her cruelties and 
her crushing taxation rankled in the hearts of the oppressed 
peoples. After twenty years of subjection, Egypt broke 
away. Twenty years more, and Babylon followed — after 
a series of fierce revolts. ^ Hordes of "Scythians" (probably 
Tartar nomads) from the north devastated the empire. And 
in 606 the Medes and Babylonians captured Nineveh itself; 
and the proud "city of blood," which had razed so many other 
cities, was given to sack and pillage. The passionate exulta- 
tion of all neighboring peoples was spoken in the stern words 
of the Hebrew prophet : " All that hear the news of thy fate 
shall clap their hands over thee — for whom hath not thy 
wickedness afflicted continually ? " ^ Two hundred years later 
the Greek adventurer Xenophon, standing on the crumbling 
ruins of Nineveh, could not even learn their name. Later the 
very site was forgotten, until revealed again by recent excava- 
tion. 

A Second Babylonian Empire began with the successful 
rebellion against Assyria, in 625 B.C., but it lasted less than 
a century. The glory of this period belongs chiefly to the reign 
of N ehuchadnezzar (604-561 B.C.). He carried away the Jews 
into the "Babylonian Captivity" — in unhappy imitation of 
Assyrian policy ; but he also rebuilt Babylon on a magnificent 
scale, and renewed the ancient engineering works. (Nebuchad- 
nezzar's own account is in Davis' Readings, and one of the 
passages omitted by Dr. Davis tells how that king rebuilt the 
" Sacred Way." See cut opposite.) Soon after this reign, 
Babylon fell before the rising power of Persia (p. 67). 

During the past thousand years, under Turkish rule, the 
last vestiges of the ancient engineering works of Chaldea have 
gone to ruin. The myriads of canals are choked with sand, 

1 Sennacherib declares that he once razed Babylon to the ground, in 
punishment for rebellion. "Temple and tower I tore down and threw 
into the canal. I dug ditches through the city, and laid waste its site. 
Greater than the deluge was its annihilation." 

2 Nahum iii, 1-19. See also Isaiah xiii, 16-22, and Jeremiah 1 and li. 



SOCIETY AND INDUSTRY 



53 



and, in this early home of civihzation, the uncontrolled over- 
flow of the river turns the eastern districts into a dreary marsh, 
while on the west the desert has drifted in, to cover the most 
fertile soil in the world, — and the sites of scores of mighty 
cities are only shapeless mounds, where sometimes nomad 




Babylonian Lion from the Sacred Wat. Straight north and south 
through Babylon ran a famous "Procession Street," or "Sacred Way," 
from the temple of Marduk, the city's guardian god, to the city gate. 
In Nebuchadnezzar's time this street was paved with huge smooth 
slabs of stone. On either side of this pavement ran a high brick wall, 
ornamented along its entire length with a frieze of lions in low relief, 
brilliantly enameled in white and yellow upon a dark blue ground and 
crowned with white rosettes. This procession of lions (symbol of the 
god) led to the colossal guardian bulls of the city gateway. 

Arabs camp for a night. Recently (since 1910), it is true, 
under German influence, the Turkish government reclaimed 
many thousand acres for fields of cotton and grain. 



II. SOCIETY, INDUSTRY, CULTURE 

The king, both in Chaldea and Assyria, was sui rounded with The king 
everything that could awe and charm the masses. Extraordi- 
nary magnificence and splendor removed him from the common 
people. He gave audience, seated on a golden throne covered 
with a purple canopy which was supported by pillars glittering 



54 



ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 



with precious stones. All who came into his presence prostrated 
themselves in the dust until bidden to rise. His rule was abso- 
lute. 

Chaldea had no class like the nobles of Egypt. Wealth 
counted for more, and birth for less, than in that country, 
^here were really only two classes, — rich and j^oor, with a 
mass of slaves. 

The peasants tilled the rich land in misery. As in Egypt 
they paid for their holdings with half of the produce. In a 
poor year, this left them in debt for seed and living. The 
creditor could charge exorbitant interest — usually 20 per cent 
a year ; and if it were not paid, he could lev}^ not only upon the 
debtor's small goods, but also upon wife or child, or upon the 
person of the farmer himself, for slavery — for a term of only 
three years, however. 

The wealthy class included landowners, officials, professional 
men, money lenders, and merchants. The merchant in partic- 
ular teas a prominent figure. The position of Chaldea, at the 
head of the Persian Gulf, made its cities the natural mart of 
exchange between India and Syria. The extensive wars of 
Assyria, cruel as they were, were not merely for love of conquest : 
they were largely commercial in purpose, — to win " a place in 
the sun," like most modern wars, — to secure the trade of Syria 
and Phoenicia, and to ruin the trade centers ^ that were com- 
peting with Nineveh. 

In 1902 A.D., a French explorer found a collection of 280 
Babylonian laws inscribed, in some 2600 lines, upon an eight- 
foot shaft of stone. This "code" asserts that it was enacted 
by Hammurapi (p. 49). It is the oldest knoion"^ code of laws 
in the world ; and it shows that the men for whom it was made 
were already far advanced in civilization. It tries to guard 
against bribery of judges and witnesses, against careless medical 



1 Damascus, Jerusalem, Tyre, and others whose names have less meaning 
to us to-day. Tyre, often besieged and reduced to a tributary state was 
not actually captm^ed, owing to her mastery of the sea. 
, \} There were older Egyptian codes, but they have not been re-discovered. 



SOCIETY AND INDUSTRY 



55 



practice, against ignorant or dishonest building contractors, 
as well as against the 
oppression of widows and 
orphans. Some provi- 
sions remind us of the 
later Jewish law of an 
eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth — 
though injuries to a poor 
man could be atoned for 
in money (Davis' Read- 
ings, I, No. 20). 

"If a man has caused a 
man of rank to lose an eye, 
one of his own eyes must 
be struck out. If he has 
shattered the limb of a man 
of rank, let his own limb be 
broken. If he has knocked 
out the tooth of a man of 
rank, his tooth must be 
knocked out. [But] , If he 
has caused a poor man to 
lose an eye, or has shattered 
a Hmb, let him pay one 
maneh of silver" [about 
$32.00 in our values]. 

This code, and other 
discoveries, show that 
rights of property were 
carefully guarded. 
Deeds, wills, marriage 
settlements, legal con- 
tracts of all kinds, sur- 
vive by tens of thousands. 
These contracts prove 
that a woman could con- 




Laws or Hammtirapi (see text) . — From 
Jasti-ow. At the top of the stone shaft, 
on one face, is a sculptured reUef repre- 
senting the king (standing) receiving the 
Law from the hand of the Sun God. 



56 



ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 



trol her own property, and carry on business, independently 
of her husband. 

The early inhabitants of Chaldea had a system of hieroglyph- 
ics not unlike the Egyptian. At first they Avrote, or painted, 
these on the papyrus, which grew in the Euphrates as well as in 
the Nile. Later, they came to press the characters with a 
sharp metal instrument into clay tablets (which were then baked 
to preserve them). This change of material led to a change 
in the written characters. The pictures shriveled and flat- 




Babylonian Contract Tablet in Duplicate. The outer tablet is broken 
and shows part of the inner original, which could always be consulted if 
the outside was thought to have been tampered with. 

tened into wedge-shaped symbols, which look like scattered 
nails with curiously battered heads. This writing is called 
cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, wedge. 

The signatures to legal documents show a great variety of 
handwritings ; and recently a Babylonian scJioolhouse has 
been excavated, where boys were taught to write. The floor 
was strewn with many "slates" (soft clay tablets when the 
Babylonian boys used them), covered with writing exercises, 
evidently from set copies, of various degrees of difficulty. When 
such a " slate" was full, the Babylonian boy cleaned it by scrap-, 
ing it smooth with a straight-edged scraper. 

The remains of Chaldean literature are abundant. Each 
of the numerous cities that studded the valley of the twin rivers 
had its library, sometimes several of them. A library was a 



LEARNING AND LIBRARIES 



57 



collection of clay tablets or bricks covered with minute cunei- 
form writing — six lines, perhaps, to an inch. In Babylon 
the ruins of one library contained over thirty thousand tablets, 
of about the date 2700 b.c, all neatly arranged in order. Orig- 
inally the libraries contained papyrus rolls also, but these the 
climate has utterly destroyed. 

A tablet, with its condensed writing, corresponds fairly well 
to a chapter in one of our books. Each tablet had its library 




Babylonian Tablets, showing the older hieroglyphics and the later cunei- 
form equivalents (apparently for the purpose of instruction) . 

number stamped upon it, and the collections were carefully 
catalogued. The kings prided themselves on keeping libraries 
open to the public ; and a large part of the inhabitants (including 
many women) could read and write. 

The literary class studied the "dead" language of the pre- 
Semitic period, as we study Latin ; and the merchants were 
obliged to know the languages spoken in Syria in that day. 
The libraries contained dictionaries and grammars of these lan- 
guages, and also many translations of foreign books, in columns 
parallel with the originals. Scribes were constantly employed in 
copying and editing ancient texts, and they seem to have been 
very careful in their work. When they could not make out a 
word in an ancient copy, they tell us so, and leave the space blank: 



58 



ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 




A Babylonian "Book." An octagon brick, now in the British Museum 
after Sayce. This representation is about one third the real size. 



OUR DEBT TO BABYLON 59 

Science was somewhat hindered by beHef in charms and magic. Chaldean 
Some of om- boyish forms of "counting out," such as "eeny, ^'^^^°'^® 
meeny, miny, moe," are playful survivals of solemn forms of 
divination used in earnest by Chaldean magicians. Still, in 
geometry the Chaldeans made as much progress as the Egyp- 
tians ; and in arithmetic more. Their notation combined the 
decimal and duodecimal systems. Sixty was a favorite unit 
(used as we use the hundred) because it is divisible by both ten 
and twelve. As in Egypt, too, the clear skies and level plains 
invited an early study of the heavenly bodies. The Chaldeans 
made star maps, marked out upon them the apparent yearly 
path of the sun, and (toward the close of their civilization) 
foretold eclipses. Every great city had its lofty observatory 
and its royal astronomer ; and in Babylon, in 331 B.C;, Alex- 
ander the Great found the record of an unbroken series of ob- 
servations running back 1900 years before that time. 

The stars were thought to influence human lives, and astron- Astrology 
omy was studied largely as a means of foretelling the future. 
This pretended science we call astrology, to distinguish it from 
real astronomy. It was practiced in Europe as late as Queen 
Elizabeth's time, and, even after so many hundred years, a 
European astrologer was always called " a Chaldean." 

The Babylonians had also many collections of legends about Legends of 
the past. Their story of the creation resembled, in many 
ways, the later Hebrew account ; and one of their legends con- 
cerned a "deluge," from which only one man, favored by the 
gods, was saved in an ark, with his family and with one pair of 
every kind of beasts. These stories, however, all have an 
exaggerated style, and lack the noble simplicity of the Hebrew 
narratives. 

The men of the Euphrates made practical use of their science. ^]s and 
They invented ivheeled carts, and, very early, they devised 
effective defensive armor — helmets of leather embossed with 
copper plates. They wrote books on agriculture, which passed on 
their skill in that field to the Greeks. They understood the lever 
and pulley, and used the arch in vaulted drains and aqueducts. 



industry 



60 



BABYLONIAN PROGRESS 



They invented an excellent system of measures, based on the 
length of finger, hand, and arm ; and these measures, along with 
their weights, have come down to us through the Greeks. Our 
pound is merely the Babylonian mi7ia renamed. The symbols 
in our "Apothecaries' Table," still used in every physician's pre- 
scription, are Babylonian, as are the curious "signs of the zodiac" 
in our almanacs. As we get from the Egyptians our year and 
months, so from the Chaldeans we get the week, with its " seventh 
day of rest for the soul," and the division of the hours into 
minutes. Their notation, by twelve and sixty, we keep on the face 
of every clock, and, in part, on every school globe. Their 

"dozen" is still one of 
our units. 

Babylonian metal- 
workers and engravers 
had surpassing skill in 
cutting gems, enameling, 
and inlaying. Every 
well-to-do person had 
his seal with which to 
sign letters and legal 
papers. The cheaper 
sort were of baked clay, 
but the richer men used 
engraved precious stones, in the form of cylinders, arranged to 
revolve on an axis of metal. Thousands of these have been 
found. Some of them, made of jasper or chalcedony or onyx, 
are works of art which it would be hard to sm-pass to-day. 
Assyrian looms, too, produced the finest of muslins and of fleecy 
woolens, to which the dyer gave the most brilliant colors. The 
rich wore long robes of those cloths, decorated with embroider- 
ies. Tapestries and carpets, also, wonderfully colored, were 
woven, for walls and floors and beds. In many such industries, 
little advance has been made since, so far as the products are 
concerned. 

The Euphrates valley had no stone and little wood. Brick 




Babylonian Cylinder Seals. 



ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE 



61 




Impression from a King's Cylinder Seal. The figure in the air repre- 
sents the god who protects the king in his perils. 

making, therefore, was, next to agriculture, the most important Architecture 
industry. Ordinary houses were built of cheap sun-dried bricks. ^°^. 
The same material was used for all but the outer courses of the 
walls of the palaces and 
temples ; ^ but for these 
outside faces, a kiln-baked 
brick was used, much like 
our own. With only these 
imperfect materials, the 
Babylonians constructed 
marvelous tower-temples 
and elevated gardens, in 
imitation of mountain 
scenery. The " Hanging 
Gardens," built by Neb- 
uchadnezzar to please his 
wife (from the Median 
mountains), rose, one ter- 
race upon another, to a 
height of one hundred 
and fifty feet, and were 




Colossal Man-beast in Alabaster. — 
From an Assyrian palace ; now in the 
British Museum. 



1 The extensive use of sun-dried brick in Chaldean cities explains their 
complete decay. In the course of ages, after being abandoned, they sank 
into shapeless mounds, indistinguishable from the surrounding plain. 



62 



ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 



counted by the Greeks among the "seven wonders of the 
world." 

Assyria abounded in excellent stone. Still for centuries her 
builders slavishly used brick, like the people from whom they 
borrowed their art. Finally, however, they came to make use 
of the better material about them for sculpture and for at 
least the facings of their public buildings. In architecture and 
sculpture, though in no other art, Assyria, land of stone, excelled 
Babylonia, land of brick. In the royal palaces especially, the 
almost unlimited power of the monarchs and their Oriental 
passion for splendor and color produced a sumptuous mag- 
nificence. The following description of a palace of ancient 
Nineveh is taken from Dr. J. K. Hosmer's The Jews. 



'* Upon a huge, wide-spreading, artificial hill, faced with masonry, for 
a platform, rose cliff-like fortress walls a hundred feet more, wide 
enough for three chariots abreast and with frequent towers shooting 
up to a stiU loftier height. Sculptured portals, by which stood silent 
guardians, colossal figm-es in white alabaster, the forms of men and 
beasts, winged and of majestic mien, admitted to the magnificence 
within. . . . Upward, tier above tier, into the blue heavens, ran lines 
of colonnades, piUars of costly cedar, cornices ghttering with gold, 
capitals blazing with vermilion, and, between them, voluminous cur- 
tains of silk, purple, and scarlet, interwoven with threads of gold. . . . 
In the interior, stretching, hteraUy, for miles, the buUder ranged the 
illustrated record of his exploits. . . . The mind grows dizzy with the 
thought of the splendor — the processions of satraps and eunuchs and 
tributary kings, winding up the stairs and passing in a radiant stream 
through the halls — the gold and embroidery, the ivory and the sump- 
tuous furniture, the pearls and the hangings." 

Babylonians and Assyrians worshiped ancestors. Mingled 
with this religion was a nature worship, with numerous gods 
and demigods. Ancestor worship is usually accompanied by a 
belief in witchcraft and in unfriendly ghosts and demons. In 
Chaldea these superstitions appeared in exaggerated form. The 
pictures in early Christian times representing the devil with 
horns, hoofs, and tail, came from the Babylonians, through the 
Jewish Talmud (a Hebrew book of learning and legends). 



RELIGION AND MORALS 63 

Nature worship, in its lower stages, is often accompanied by 
debasing rites, in which drunkenness and sensuahty appear as 
acts of worship. The stern reproaches of the Hebrew prophets 
have made Babylon notorious for such features in her religion. 




FsAGMENT OF BABYLONIA^r " Deluge-Tablet," with part of the story 
of a deluge. 

But the following extracts from Babylonian writings show some 
noble religious thought. (See also Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 21 
and 22.) 

From a Chaldean hymn (composed in the city of Ur, before 
the time of Abraham) : 



64 ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 

"Father, long suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds the 

life of all mankind ! . . . 
First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none 

who may fathom it ! . . . 
In heaven, who is supreme ? Thou alone, thou art supreme ! * 
On earth, who is supreme ? Thou alone, thou art supreme ! 
As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels bow their 

faces. 
As for thee, thy wiU is made known upon earth, and the spirits below 

kiss the ground." 

From a Prayer of Nebuchadnezzar : 

"Thou hast created me. . . . Set thou the fear of thy divine 
power in my heart. Give me what seemest good to thee, since thou 
maintainest my life." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 

Now the map grows. Shortly before the overthrow of Babylon, Lydia and 
two new centers of power appeared, one on either side of the * ^ ^^ 
Syrian crescent. These were Persia and Lydia. Lydia was a 
kingdom in western Asia Minor. Somewhat before 550 B.C. 
its sovereign, Croesus, united all Asia Minor west of the Halys 
River under his sway, including the many Greek cities on the 
eastern Mediterranean coast. This made the Lydian Empire 
for a time one of the great world-powers (map following) . 

The region abounded in gold and silver ; and " rich as Croe- 
sus" became a byword. Lydia 's gift to the world was the 
invention of coinage. As early as 650 B.C., a Lydian king 
stamped upon pieces of silver a statement of their weight and 
purity, with his name and picture as guarantee of the statement. 
Until this time, little advance had been made over the old 
Egyptian method of trade, except that the use of silver rings and 
bars had become more common. The Babylonians, along with 
their other weights and measures, had taught the world to 
count riches in shekels, — ounces of silver ; but there were no 
coined shekels, and there was little security against cheaper 
metals being mixed with the silver. The true money of Lydia 
could be received anywhere at once at a fixed rate. This made 
all forms of trade and commerce vastly easier. Other states 
began to adopt systems of coinage of their own. Ever since, 
the coinage of money has been one of the important duties of 
governments. 

We must not suppose, however, that the old sort of 
"barter" vanished at once. It remained the common 
method of exchange in all but the great markets of the 

65 



66 



THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 



world for centuries ; and in new countries it has appeared, 
in the lack of coined money, in very modern times. In 
our early New England colonies there were times when 
people paid taxes and debts "in kind," much after the 
old Egyptian fashion. 

On the farther side of the Euphrates and Tigris lay the lofty 
and somewhat arid Plateau of Iran. This was the home of the 
Medes and Persians. These peoples appeared first about 850 

B.C., as fierce barbarians, 
whom Assyria found it 
needful to subdue re- 
peatedly. Gradually they 
adopted the civilization of 
their neighbors ; and, in 
606, as we have seen, the 
Medes conquered Assyi'ia. 
Then the civilized world 
was divided, for three 
generations,^ between four 
great powers, — Babylon, 
Egypt, Lydia, and Media. 
These kingdoms were 
friendly allies, and the 
civilized world had a rare 
rest from internal war. Media, it is true, busied herself in 
extending her dominions by war with barbarous tribes on the 
east. By such means she added to her territory all the Plateau 
of Iran and the northern portion of the old Assyrian Empire. 
This made her far the largest of the four states. But in 558 
B.C., Cyrus, a tributary prince of the Persian tribes, threw off 
the yoke of the Medes and set up an independent Persian 
monarchy. 

1 A generation, as a measure of time, means the average interval that 
separates a father from his son. This corresponds in length, also, in a 
rough way, to the active years of adult life, — the period between early 
manhood and old age. It is reckoned at twenty-five or thirty years. 




A Persian Gold Armlet found in 1877 
on the banks of the Oxus. Now in the 
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 



PERSIA SAVES CIVILIZATION 



67 



Persia quickly became the largest and most powerful empire 
the world had known. The war with Media resulted in the rapid 
conquest of that state. This victory led Cyrus into war with 
Lydia and Babylon, which were allies of Media. Again he 
was overwhelmingly victorious. He conquered Croesus of 
Lydia and seized upon all Asia Minor. Then he captured 
Babylon, and a few years later his son subdued Egypt. Thus 
the new empire included all the former empires, together with the 
new districts of Iran and Asia Minor. 

The field, of history now widened again. The next three Persian 
kings (after Cyrus and his son) added vast districts to the Em- 
pire : on the east, modern Afghanistan and northwestern India, 
with wide regions to the northeast beyond the Caspian Sea ; 
and on the west, the European coast from the Black Sea to the 
Greek peninsula and the islands of the Aegean. 

This huge Empire contained possibly seventy-five million 
people, and its eastern and western frontiers were farther apart 
than Washington and San Francisco. Its only civilized neigh- 
bors were India ^ and Greece. Elsewhere, indeed, it was 
bounded by seas and deserts. 

Persian art and literature were wholly borrowed, — mainly 
from Babylonia. The cuneiform writing was adopted from 
that land ; and even the noble palaces, which have been redis- 
covered at Persepolis, were only copies of Assyrian palaces. 
Besides the expansion of the map, already noted, Persia's 
services to the world were three: the repulse of Scythian savages ; 
a better organization of government; and the lofty character of her 
religion. 

1. About 630 B.C., shortly before the downfall of Nineveh, the 
steppes of the North had poured hordes of savages into western 
Asia (p. 52). By the Greeks these nomads were called Scythians, 
and their inroads were like those of the Huns, Turks, and 



Cyrus " the 
Great " 
makes the 
Persian 
Empire 



Extent and 
population 



Persia and 

the 

Scythians 



1 Civilizations grew up at a very early date in the great river valleys of 
India and China ; but these civilizations have not much affected our "West- 
ern" civilization until very recently. Therefore they are not taken into ac- 
count in this volume. 



68 



THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 



Tartars, in later history. They plundered as far as Egypt; 
and they were a real danger to all the culture the world had 
been building up so painfully for four thousand years. Assyria 
and Lydia proved helpless to hold them back, but the Medes 
and Persians saved civilization. The Medes drove the ruthless 
ravagers back to their own deserts, and the early Persian kings 
made repeated expeditions into the Scythian country. The 
barbarians were awed, and for centuries the danger of their 
attacks was averted. 




A Lion Frieze from a palace at Susa built by Artaxerxes Memnon, a 
Persian king, about 404 B.C. Note the Babylonian influence. Now in 
the Louvre, Paris. 

Darius, the greatest of the successors of Cyrus, seems to have 
justified his conquests on the ground of this service to civiliza- 
tion. In a famous inscription enumerating his conquests, he 
says : " Ahura-Mazda [the God of Light] delivered unto me 
these countries when he saw them in uproar. . . . By the 
grace of Ahura-Mazda I have brought them to order again." 
(The lengthy inscription from which this passage is taken is cut 
into a rock clifl^, 300 feet from the base, in three parallel columns, 
in different languages, — Persian, Babylonian, and Tartar . This 
cliff served as the "Rosetta Stone" of the cuneiform writing.) 

2. The empires that came before the Assyrian were held 
together very loosely. The "tributary kingdoms" within an 



DARIUS THE ORGANIZER 69 

empire had to pay tribute and to assist in war, and from time 
to time their kings were expected to attend the court of their 
master. Otherwise, the subject states were separate units. 
They kept their old kings and their own language, laws, and 
customs. Two of them sometimes made war upon each other, 
without interference from the head king. 

Such an empire easily fell to pieces. The native princes 
kept a natural ambition to become supreme sovereigns, and 
could easily rally their people about them in such attempts. 
A foreign invasion or the unexpected death of a sovereign 
might shatter the union. Each of the original kingdoms would 
become independent again ; and then would follow years of 
bloody war, until some king built up the empire once more. 
Peace and security could not exist. ^, 

The Assyrian rulers had begun to reform this plan of govern- 
ment. They left the subject peoples their own Taws and cus- 
toms, as before; but they broke up some of the old kingdoms 
into satrapies, or provinces, ruled by appointed officers. This 
was Assyria's sole contribution to progress. The system, how- 
ever, was still unsatisfactory. In theory the satraps were wholly 
dependent upon the will of the imperial king; but in practice 
they were very nearly kings themselves, and they were under con- 
stant temptation to try to become independent rulers, by rebellion. 

The Persians adopted and extended the system of satraps ; 
and Darius "the Organizer," the fourth Persian king (521-485 
B.C.), introduced three neiv checks upon rebellion. (1) In each 
of the twenty provinces, power was divided between the satrap 
himself and the commander of the standing army. (2) In 
each province was placed a royal secretary (the "King's Ear") 
to communicate constantly with the Great King. And 
(3), most important of all, a special royal commission (the 
"King's Eye"), backed with military forces, appeared at 
intervals in each satrapy to inquire into the government, and, 
if necessary, to arrest the satrap. 

This was the most satisfactory organization ever invented 
by an Oriental empire, ancient or modern. To the vast 



70 



THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 



Persian world it brought a long period of freedom from the 
waste and horror of internal war. 

Each of the subject provinces kept its own language and 
customs ; but Darius did something also to create a spirit of union 
in the Empire. He reopened the ancient Egyptian canal from 
the Nile to the Red Sea, ^ to encourage trade ; ^ and, to draw the 
distant parts of the Empire together, he built a magnificent 



KiP^^pa«fM 




Archers of the Persian Guard, from a glazed frieze of Darius' palace 
at Susa, "restored" later by Artaxerxes Memnon. This frieze, too, is 
now in the Louvre. 

system of post roads, with milestones and excellent inns, with 
ferries and bridges, and with relays of horses for the royal 
couriers. The chief road, from Susa to Sardis (map after page 
66), was fifteen hundred miles long. Benjamin Ide Wheeler 
writes of this great highway {Alexander the Great, 196-197) : 

1 A series of monuments set up by Darius to commemorate this great 
engineering work have recently been dug out of the sands which, after a few 
generations, had been allowed again to bury it. 

2 It was then that trade with the Far East first brought our domestic 
"chicken" into Western Asia. 



RELIGION AND MORALS 



71 



" All the diverse life of the countries it traversed was drawn into its 
paths. Carians and Cilicians, Phrygians and Cappadocians, staid 
Lydians, sociable Greeks, crafty Armenians, rude traders from the 
Euxine shores, nabobs of Babylon, Medes and Persians, galloping 
couriers mounted on their Bokhara ponies or fine Arab steeds, envoys 
with train and state, peasants driving their donkeys laden with skins 
of oil or wine or sacks of grain, stately caravans bearing the wares and 
fabrics of the south to exchange for the metals, slaves, and grain of the 
north, travelers and traders seeking to know and exploit the world, — 
all were there, and all were safe under the protection of an empire the 
roadway of which pierced the strata of many tribes and many cultures, 
and helped set the world a-mixing." 

3. While they were still barbarous tribes, the Persians had The Persian 
learned to worship the forces of nature, — especially sun, moon, rehgion 
stars, and fire. This wor- 
ship was in the hands of 
priests, called Magi, who 
were believed to possess 
"magic'' powers over 
nature and other men. 

Even this early religion 
had few of the lower 
features that we have 
noted in the worship of 
the Egyptians and Baby- 
lonians. But the Persians 
of the historic age had 
risen to a nobler worship. 
This is set forth in the 
Zend-Avesta (the Persian 
Bible), and it had been 
established about 1000 

B.C. by Zoroaster. According to this great teacher, the world is Zoroaster 
a stage for unceasing conflict between the powers of Light and 
Darkness, or Good and Evil. It is man's duty to assist the 
good power by resisting evil impulses in his own heart and by 
fighting injustice among men. It is also his place to kill harmful 




Capital of a Column from " Artaxerxes' 
palace " at Susa. Now in the Louvre. 



72 



THE PERSIAN EMPIRE 



beasts, to care tenderly for other animals, and to make the earth 
fruitful. 

The superstitions of Magism continued to crop out among the 
masses of tjie people, especially in the belief in a multitude of 
angels, good and bad ; but idolatry was not permitted, and this 
Zoroastrian faith was by far the purest of the ancient world, 

except that of the He- 




When the Persians 
supreme, they 



A Detail from the ThUone of Xerxes 
(son of Darius) in his palace at Persep- 
olis. Now in the Louvre. 



brews, 
became 
showed marked favor to 
the Hebrews. Cyrus per- 
mitted them to return from 
the Babylonian captivity 
(p. 52), and even helped 
them to rebuild the Tem- 
ple. These friendly rela- 
tions were due in part, no 
doubt, to likeness in re- 
ligious thought between 
Persians and Jews. 

The following passage 
from the Zend-Avesta 
shows the Persian idea of 
the future life. 



"At the head of the Chinvat Bridge, betwixt this world and the next, 
when the soul goes over it, there comes a fair, white-armed and beautiful 
figure, like a maid in her fifteenth year, as fair as the fairest things in the 
world. And the soul of the true behever speaks to her, ' What maid art 
thou, — all surpassing in thy beauty ? ' And she makes answer, ' O 
youth of good thought, good words, good deeds, and of good religion, 
— I am thine own conscience.' 

"Then pass the souls of the. righteous to the golden seat of Ahura- 
Mazda, of the Archangels, to . . . 'The Abode of Song." " 

Another passage tells how the souls of the wicked are met by 
a foul hag and are plunged into a hideous pit, to suffer endless 
torment. 



RELIGION AND MORALS 73 

The cardinal virtue was truthfulness. Darius' instructions 
to his successor began: "Keep thyself utterly from lies. The 
man who is a liar, him destroy utterly. If thou do thus, my 
country will remain whole." A century later, the Greek 
Herodotus admired the manly sports of the Persians and the 
simple training of their boys, — "to ride, to shoot with the bow, 
and to speak the truth." 

Persia was at the height of her power about 500 B.C. The 
Oriental peoples had then possessed a complex civilization for more 
than IfiOO years — a much longer time than has passed since. 
To appreciate these pioneers of civilization, too, we must 
remember that, for a thousand years more, our own ancestors 
were merely wandering savages, clad in skins, among the swamps 
and forests of northern Europe. 

For Further Reading. — There is an admirable twenty-page treat- 
ment of the Persian Empire in Benjamin Ide Wheeler's Alexander the 
Great (pp. 187-207), — a book which for other reasons deserves a place 
in every school library. Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 
31, contain much interesting material upon Persian religion and morals. 

Exercise. — Would you have expected the Persians to adopt the 
Egyptian hieroglyphs or the cuneiform writing? Why? In what 
ways was the organization of the Persian Empire an improvement 
upon that of the Assyrian ? In what way did Assyrian organization 
improve upon Egyptian? 



CHAPTER V 

THE MIDDLE STATES 

From the Persian Empire the story of civilization passes 
back to Europe, — ^but, before taking up the story there, we must 
stop briefly to supply an omission in the Asiatic chapters. 
Syria, the middle land between the Nile and the Euphrates, 
early became the battle ground of the great empires, and 
suffered terribly from them ; but it also became their trade 
exchange, and drew much civilization from them. Of the many 
small Syrian peoples (p. 41), two were themselves real factors 
in the progress of the world — the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. 

I. THE PHOENICIANS 

The Phoenicians dwelt on a little strip of broken coast shut 
off from the interior by the Lebanon Mountains (map, p. 78). 
Their many harbors invited them seaward, and the "cedar of 
Lebanon" offered the best of ship timber. When history first 
reveals the Mediterranean, it is dotted with their adventurous 
sails. At first, half traders, half pirates, their crews crept 
from island to island, to barter with the natives or to sweep 
them off for slaves, as chance might best suggest. Then, more 
daringly, they sought wealth farther and farther on the sea, 
until they passed even the Pillars of Hercules, i into the open 
Atlantic. By 1100 B.C. they had become the traders of the world; 
and we see them exchanging the precious tin of Britain, the 
yellow amber of the Baltic, and the slaves and ivory of West 
Africa, for the spices, gold, scented wood, and precious stones 
of India. Their vessels carried most of the commerce of Egypt 

1 Two lofty hills, one on each side of the Strait of Gibraltar, beyond which 
the Ancients generally thought lay inconceivable perils (map after p. 108). 

74 



THE ALPHABET • 75 

and of Babylonia, and the ship that Neco sent to circumnavigate 
Africa was manned by Phoenician sailors. 

The chief Phoenician cities, Tyre and Sidon, were among Tyre and 
the most splendid and wealthy in the world. Ezekiel (xxvi, Sidon 
xxvii) describes the grandeur of Tyre in glowing words : — 

" thou that dwellest at the entry of the sea, which art the merchant 
of the peoples unto many isles, . . . thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am per- 
fect in beauty. Thy borders are in the heart of the seas; thy builders 
have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy planks of fir 
trees. . . . They have taken cedars from Lebanon to be masts for 
thee; they have made thy benches of ivory inlaid in boxwood from 
the isles of Kittim [Kition in Cyprus]. Of fine linen with broidered 
work from Egypt was thy saU, . . . blue and purple from the isles of 
Elishah [North Africa] was thy awning. . . . All the ships of the sea 
were in thee to exchange thy merchandise. . . . With silver, iron, 
tin, and lead they traded for thy wares." (Ezekiel names also, among 
the articles of exchange, emeralds, coral, ivory, ebony, rubies, wheat, 
honey, oil, balm, wine, wool, yarn, spices, horses, mules, lambs, and 
goats.) 

The Phoenicians were the first colonizers. They fringed the The first 

larger islands and the shores of the Mediterranean with trading colonizers 

... ° m history 

stations, which became new centers of civilization. Carthage, 

Utica, Gades (Cadiz, on the Atlantic), were among their colonies 
(map after page 108). They worked tin mines in Colchis, in 
Spain, and finally in Britain, and so made possible the manu- 
facture of bronze on a larger scale than before, to replace stone 
implements. Probably they first introduced bronze into many 
parts of Europe. 

To get things wherewith to trade, the Phoenicians became industries 
manufacturers, — learning from Egyptians and Babylonians to 
work in metals, glass, and textiles. Hammer, loom, potter's 
wheel, engraver's knife, were always busy in Tyre. Tyrian 
products are found in great numbers in the ancient tombs of 
Greece and Italy — the earliest European homes of civilization. 
The Phoenicians were "missionaries" of culture. It was their Mission- 
function, not to create civilization, but to spread it. Especially ^"^ ° . 
did they teach the Greeks, who were to teach the rest of Europe. 



76 



THE HEBREWS 



The chief export of the Phoenicians, it is well said, was the 
alphabet. When the Egyptians first conquered Syria, about 
1600 A.D., the Phoenicians were using the cuneiform script of 
Babylon (introduced among them by Hammurapi's conquest). 
But their commerce made it necessary to keep complicated 
accounts and to communicate with agents in distant ports. 
This called for a simpler way of writing; and, about 1100 B.C., 
we find the Phoenicians with a true alphabet of twenty-two 
letters —for consonant sounds only. It is not certain whether 
they got these letters from Egyptian "sound-symbols" or from 
Crete (p. 87 below). 

Satisfied with their profits, the Phoenician cities submitted 
easily, as a rule, to any powerful neighbor. From Babylonia, 
from Egypt, from Persia, in turn, they bought security for 
their gains by paying tribute in money and in ships. Assyria 
sought to annihilate the Phoenician cities, as rivals in trade, 
and did destroy many of them ; but Tyre was saved by her 
position on a rocky island-promontory. Finally, in 332 B.C., 
it was captured by Alexander the Great (p. 214). From this 
downfall the proud city never fully recovered, and fishermen 
now spread their nets to dry in the sun on the bare rock where 
once her tall towers rose. 



II. THE HEBREWS 

As the Phoenicians were men of the sea, so the early Hebrews 
were men of the desert. They appear first as wandering 
shepherds along the grazing lands on the edge of the Arabian 
sands. Abraham, the founder of the race, emigrated from "Ur 
of the Chaldees," about 2100 B.C. He and his descendants, 
Isaac and Jacob, lived and ruled as patriarchal chiefs, much 
as Arab sheiks do in the same regions to-day. 

Finally, "the famine was sore in the land." Jacob and his 
sons, with their tribesmen and flocks, sought refuge in Egypt. 
Here they found Joseph, one of their brethren, already high in 
royal favor. The rulers of Egypt at this time, too, were the 
Hyksos, themselves originally Arabian shepherds ; and the 



AND THEIR MISSION 



77 



Hebrews were allowed to settle in the fertile pasturage of 
Goshen, near the Red Sea, where flitting Arab tribes have always 
been wont to encamp. But soon the native Egyptian rule was 
restored by the Theban pharaohs, "who knew not Joseph." 
These powerful princes of the New Empire (p. 42) reduced the 




The Fertile Land of Goshen To-day. — Palms and grain. 
Petrie's Egypt and Israel. 



From 



Hebrews to slavery, and employed them on their great public 
works, and " made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar 
and in brick and in all manner of service in the field." 

Three centuries later, while the Egyptian government was in The Exodus 
a period of weakness and disorder, the oppressed people escaped 



78 



THE HEBREWS 



of 



to the Arabian desert again, led by the hero Moses. For a 
man's lifetime, the fugitives wandered to and fro, after their 
ancient manner; but they were now a numerous people and 
had become accustomed to fixed abodes. About 1250 b.c, 

under Joshua, to 
whom Moses had 
turned over the lead- 
ership, they began 
to conquer the fer- 
tile valleys of Pales- 
tine for their home. 
Then followed two 
centuries of bloody 
warfare with their 
neighbors, some of 
whom had long be- 
fore taken on the 
civilization of Baby- 
lonia. 

During this period 
the Hebrews re- 
mained a loose alli- 
ance of twelve shep- 
herd tribes, led by a 
series of popular he- 
roes, like Samson, 
Jephthah, Gideon, and 
Samuel, known as 
Judges. Much of the 
time there was great 
and ruinous disorder, 
and bands of robbers 
Finally, the Philistines for 




Kings and 
prophets 



drove travelers from the highways. 
a time overran the land at will. 

Thus the Hebrews felt the necessity for stronger government. 
Saul, a mighty warrior, roused them against the Philistine 



AND THEIR MISSION ' 79 

spoilers, and led them to victory. In return they made him 
their first king. Alongside this monarch and his successors, 
however, there stood religious teachers with great authority. 
These "prophets" had no official position. Commonly they 
were shepherd preachers, or hermits, clad perhaps only in the 
sheepskin of the desert ; but the more devout of the people 
honored them for their courage and eloquence and high-minded- 
ness. They did not hesitate to rebuke or oppose a sovereign. 

David the second king (about 1070-977), completely subdued 
the Philistines. Then, taking shrewd advantage of the fact that 
the great states on the Nile and the Euphrates were both in a 
period of decay, he raised the Hebrew state into a considerable 
empire, including nearly all western Syria except Phoenicia. 
He will be remembered longest, however, not for his deeds as a The king- 
daring warrior or even as a wise organizer of an empire, but pj°™j 
rather as "the sweet singer of Israel." He was originally a 
shepherd boy, who attracted Saul's favor by his beauty and his 
skill upon the harp ; and, in the most troublous days of his 
kingship, he sought rest and comfort in composing songs and 
poems, which are now included in the sacred Book of Psalms. 

David had planned a noble temple at Jerusalem for . the Solomon 
worship of Jehovah ; but the work was actually carried out by ^emDle 
his son, Solomon. The Hebrews had little ability in archi- 
tecture ; but Solomon's ally, King Hiram of Tyre, sent skilled 
Phoenician builders for the work, and it was completed with great 
magnificence. Through the rest of their history it remained 
the chief center of interest for the Hebrew people. 

Until this period, Hebrew life had been plain and simple. 
The people were merely herdsmen and tillers of the soil. Not 
till after the Babylonian captivity, later, did they engage in 
commerce. But Solomon built rich palaces with his foreign 
workmen, and copied within them all the magnificence and 
luxury of an Oriental court. His reign (977-937 B.C.) closed 
the brief age of •political greatness for the Hebrews. 

The twelve tribes had not come to feel themselves really one Division and 
nation. They had been divided into two groups in earlier ^^ ^^ 



80 



THE HEBREWS 



times : ten tribes in one group ; two in the other. The " ten 
tribes," too, now held the north, the more fertile part of 
Palestine, with its numerous cities. The "two tribes," in 
the rugged south, were still largely shepherds and herdsmen. 
David had belonged to the smaller group, and his early kingship 
had extended over only the two tribes. Jealousies against the 
rule of his house had smoldered all along among the ten tribes. 
Now came a final separation. Solomon's taxes had sorely 
burdened the people. On his death, the ten tribes petitioned 
his son for relief, and when the young king (Rehoboam) replied 
with haughty insult, they set up for themselves as the Kingdovi 
of Israel, with a capital at Samaria. The tribes of Benjamin 
and Judah remained faithful to the house of David. These 
became the Kiiigdom of Judah, with the old capital, Jerusalem. 

The Kingdom of Israel lasted 250 years, until Sargon carried 
the ten tribes into that Assyrian captivity in which they are 
"lost" to history (p. 50). Judah lasted four centuries after the 
separation, most of the time tributary to Assyria or to Babylon. 
Finally, in punishment for rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar carried 
away the people into the Bahylonian captivity (p. 52). 

The more zealous of the Jews were allowed to return to 
"Judea" when the Persians conquered Babylon. Such control 
of their own affairs as was left to them was then in the hands of 
the priests, led by the High Priest of the Temple at Jerusalem. 
Our "Old Testament" consists of the Hebrew writings, which 
were, for the most part, produced, or at least copied and re- 
arranged, in the zealous religious period shortly after the return 
from Babylon. These writings were not put into one book, 
however, until several centuries later. 



The Hebrews added nothing to material civilization : they 
did not profit the world by building roads, perfecting trades, or 
inventing new processes in industry. Nor did they contribute 
directly to any art. Their work was higher. Their religious 
literature was the noblest the world had seen, and it has passed 
into all the literatures of the civilized world ; but even this is 



AND THEIR MISSION 81 

valuable not so much for its literary merit as for its moral 
teachings. The true history of the Hebrews is the record of 
their spiritual growth. Their religion was infinitely purer and 
truer than any other of the ancient world. 

At first this lofty faith belonged to only a few — to the Growth of 
patriarchs and later to the prophets, with a small following 
of the more spiritually minded of the nation. For a thousand 
years the common people, and some of the kings, were constantly 
falling away into the superstitions of their Syrian neighbors. 
But it is the supreme merit of the Hebrews that a remnant 
always clung to the higher religion, until it became the universal 
faith of a whole people. 

The Babylonian Captivity helped bring this result. The 
few devoted men and women who found their way back to 
Judea through so many hardships were indeed a "chosen" 
and sifted people. Among them there was no more tendency 
to idolatry. The faith of the patriarchs and prophets became 
the soul of a nation, — as a later development of that faith 
was to become the soul of our civilization. 

Suggestions for Review * 

Let the class prepare review questions, each member five or ten, to 
ask of the others. Criticize the questions, showing which ones help 
to bring out important facts and contrasts and likenesses, and which 
are merely trivial or curious. The author of this volume does not 
think it worth while to hold students responsible for precise dates in 
Part I. It is well to make lists of important names or terms for rapid 
drill, demanding brief but clear explanation of each term, i.e. cuneiform, 
shekel, Hyksos, papyrus. 

Sample Questions : (1) In what did the Egyptians excel the Babylo- 
nians? (2) In what did the Babylonians excel the Egyptians? (3) In 
what did the Persians excel both? (4) Trace the growth of the map 
for civilized countries. (5) Locate four centers of civilization for 
1500 B.C., and observe, on the map, where they would most naturally 
come in contact with one another. (One more center for that age — 
Crete — is yet to be treated.) (6) What new center became promi- 
nent between 1700 and 1000 B.C.? 

Caution: Make sure that the terms "empire," "state," "tributary 
state," " civUization," have a definite meaning for the student. 



PART II 

THE GEEEKS 

Greece — that point of light in history ! — Hegel. 
We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our art, have 
their roots in Greece. — Shelley. 



CHAPTER VI 



Aegean 
culture 
3500 B.C. 



A native 
culture 



AEGEAN CIVILIZATION, 3500—1200 B. C. 

We left Europe in the upper stages of the Stone Age. South- 
eastern Europe, in particular, continued to push steadily on- 
ward. At least as early as 3500 B.C. slim, 
short, dark-skinned men were living in round- 
hut villages on the shores and islands of the 
eastern Mediterranean. Especially about the 
Aegean Sea with its clustering islands, these 
men were making a graceful pottery charm- 
ingly decorated, and had developed consid- 
erable trade. One proof of this trade is that 
everywhere their better knives and arrowheads 
were made of a peculiar, hard, dark stone 
(obsidian), which, for that district, is found 
only in the one island of Melos. 

These Aegeans did not learn the use of 
bronze from Egypt until some two thousand 
years after its invention there ; but, having 
once begun, they soon drew many other gifts 
and hints from the Oriental states, to which 
they were so near. The remains in the soil, 
however, show no ivholesale introduction of a foreign culture. 
The Aegeans did not merely borrow and copy : they made 

82 




Vase from Knossos 
(2200 B.C.), with 
sea-life ornament. 



I 




Tonlana 
Dprisins 

Eoute of Xerxes 



20 



Longitude 






EARLY AEGEAN PROGRESS 



83 



foreign inventions their own by adapting them to their own Hfe, 
and by improving upon them. This earhest European civihza- 
tion had a distinct character of its own. 

In this early period, leadership in the Aegean fell naturally Cretan 
to Crete. Old Greek legends represent that island as a leading leadership 
source of Greek civilization and as the home of powerful kings 




Mouth of Palace Sewer at Knossos, with terracotta drain pipes, 
showing method of joining pipes. From Baikie. 



long before the Greek tribes on the mainland rose out of bar- 
barism. These legends we used to think mere fables ; but 
recent excavations have proved that they were based on truth. 
Crete stretches its long body across the mouth of the Aegean, 
and forms a natural stepping-stone from Egypt to Europe. 
By 2500 B.C. it had advanced far into the Bronze Age, and for 
the next thousand years its civilization rivaled that of Egypt 
itself. Hand-made pottery had given way to admirable work 



84 



THE GREEKS 



on the potter's wheel ; and the vase-paintings, of birds and 
beasts and plant and sea life, are more lifelike than anything 
in Egyptian art. The walls of the houses were decorated with 
a delicate "eggshell" porcelain, in artistic designs. Gold inlay 
work had reached great perfection. At Knossos, a palace, 
built about 2200 b.c, has been unearthed, spreading over 
more than four acres of ground, with splendid halls, corridors, 
living rooms, throne rooms, and treasure rooms. Especially 
amazing are the bathrooms, with a drainage system "superior 




" Vaphio Cups " : 3| inches high ; 8 ounces each. Found at Vaphio, in the 
Peloponnesus, in 1889 a.d., and dating back at least to 1800 or 2000 B.C. 
Probably Cretan in origin. Very delicate and yet vigorous goldsmith 
work. See the scroll on the page opposite. 

to anything in Europe until the nineteenth century." ^ The 
pipes could be flushed ; and a man-trap permitted inspection 
and repair. Back of the Queen's apartments stood a smaller 
room with a baby's bath. 

Frescoes on the palace walls picture the brilliant life of the 
lords and ladies of the court. Dependents of the ruler march 
in long stately processions, bearing gifts. Gayly adorned 
dames, and gentlemen wearing their hair in long curls, stand 
in lively groups, or dance, or sit, or flirt, gesticulating in their 
talk like southern Europeans to-day. Often the court is 
entertained by the spectacle of troops of daring bull-trainers 

1 Recent excavations show such systems in still older Egyptian temples. 



CRETAN LEADERSHIP 



85 




86 



EARLY AEGEAN CIVILIZATION 



taming wild bulls ; ^ and on such outdoor occasions, the ladies 
protect their complexions with veils. Vase paintings, too, 
show peasants in joyous harvest festivals, bearing sheaves of 
grain on their shoulders or in their arms. 

This palace is usually called the palace of "King Minos," 
the only Cretan name known to us. Minos was famed by the 

later Greeks as a great 
lawgiver. We may think 
of him then (or of some 
other great Cretan mon- 
arch) ruling widely over 
the surrounding seas from 
his throne at Knossos, 
while Hammurapi was 
issuing his code of laws 
at Babylon, or while some 
one of the beneficent 
pharaohs of the Egyptian 
Middle Kingdom was con- 
structing Lake Moeris, 
or about the time when 
Abraham set out from Ur 
of the Chaldees. 

In the treasure rooms 
of the palace at Knossos, 
there were found numbers 
of small clay tablets covered 
with writing — apparently 
memoranda of the receipt of taxes. These, and other such re- 
mains since discovered, show that the Cretans had developed a 
system of syllabic writing, based on Egyptian sound symbols, but 
more advanced. Unhappily scholars have not yet learned to 




So-called Throne of Minos in the palace 
at Knossos. Says Baikie {Sea Kings of 
Crete, 72) : " No more ancient throne ex- 
ists in Europe, or probably in the world, 
and none whose associations are any- 
thing like so full of interest." 



1 The bull was a favorite subject for Cretan art. See some illustrations 
in these pages. Compare also the later story of the Athenian hero Theseus 
and the Cretan Minotaur (bull), in any collection of Greek legends, as in 
Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, 



CRETAN LEADERSHIP 



87 



read it. A Roman historian who wrote a httle before the birth 
of Christ mentions that in his day the Cretans claimed that their 
ancestors had invented the alphabet, and that the Phoenicians 
had only made it better known. Modern Cretans had forgotten 
this claim ; but these recent discoveries give it much support. 



The chief article of male dress was a linen cloth hanging from Dress and 
the waist or drawn into short trousers (like the dress of men on ^^ ^°°^ 
the Egyptian monuments) . 
To this, except in war or 
hunting, the noble some- 
times added a short, sleeve- 
less mantle, fastened over 
one shoulder with a jeweled 
pin; and a belt, drawn 
tight about the waist, al- 
ways carried his dagger, 
inlaid with gold figures. 
Women's dress was elabo- 
rate, with " careful fitting, 
fine sewing, and exquisite 
embroidery." The skirts 
were bell-shaped — like a 
modern fashion of fifty 
years ago — and flounced 
with ruffles ; and the bod- 
ice was close-fitting, low-necked, and short-sleeved, — much 
more like female dress to-day than the later Greek and Roman 
robes were. Men and women alike wore gold bracelets and 
rings, and women added long coils of beaded necklaces. 

Each home wove its own cloth, as we learn from the loom- 
weights in every house. Each home, too, had its stone mortars 
for grinding the daily supply of meal. Kitchen utensils were 
varied and numerous. They include perforated skimmers and 
strainers, and charcoal carriers, and many other devices strangely 
modern in shape. Most cooking was done over an open fire of 




Cretan Writing of 2200 b.c. — Plainly 
some of these characters are numerals. 
Others resemble later Greek letters. 



Tools and 
utensils 



EARLY AEGEAN CIVILIZATION 




Cooking Utensils of 2200 e.g., found in one tomb at Knossos. 
sticks — though sometimes there was a sort of recess in a hearth, 



over which a kettle stood. 




SiLVEB Head of Bull from My- 
cenae. — Cf. page 86. 



When the destroying foe came 
upon Knossos, one carpenter 
left his kit of tools hidden under 
a stone slab, which preserved 
them ; and among them we find 
saws, hammers, adze, chisels, 
heavy and light, awls, nails, 
files, and axes. They are of 
bronze, of course; but in shape 
they are so like our own that it 
seems probable that this handi- 
craft passed down its skill with- 
out a break from the earliest 
European civilization to the pres- 
ent. One huge crosscut saw, like 
our lumberman's, was found in 
a mountain town, — used prob- 
ably to cut the great trees there 
into columns for the palaces. 



CRETAN LEADERSHIP 



89 



Crete did not stand by itself in its culture. The Greeks of Mycenae 
the historical period had many legends about the glories of " "ch in 
an older Mycenae "rich in gold." And there, in Argolis, some ^°^^ 




Gate of the Lions at Mycenae. — The huge stone at the top, supporting 
the lions, is 15 feet long and 7 feet thick. Enemies could reach the gate 
only by passing between flanking stone walls, from behind which archers 
could shoot down upon them. 

fifty years ago an explorer uncovered remains of an ancient 
city of perhaps 1200 B.C., with peculiar, massive ("Cyclopean") 
walls. Within were found a curious group of tombs where 
lay in state the embalmed bodies of ancient kings, — 



90 EARLY AEGEAN CIVILIZATION 

" in the splendor of their crowns and breastplates of embossed plate of 
gold ; their swords studded with golden imagery ; their faces covered 
strangely in golden masks. The very floor of one tomb was thick with 
gold dust — the heavy gilding from some perished kingly vestment. 
In another was a downfall of golden leaves and flowers. And amid 
this profusion of fine fragments were rings, bracelets, . . . dainty 
butterflies for ornaments, and a wonderful golden flower on a silver 
stalk." 

In one tomb, five bodies were " literally smothered in jewels." 
And, with these ornaments, there were skillfully and curiously 
wrought weapons for the dead, with whetstones to keep them 
keen, and graceful vases of marble and alabaster, carved with 
delicate forms, to hold the funeral food and wine. Near the 
entrance lay bodies of slaves or captives who had been offered 
in sacrifice. 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, 
1, No. 32, gives an interesting extract from an account of Cretan re- 
mains by one of the discoverers. Bury's History of Greece, 7-11, on 
Cretan culture; 11-33, on remains near Mycence. Hah these pages are 
given to illustrations. The student may best omit or disregard Pro- 
fessor Bury's frequent discussions as to whether Cretans were " Greeks." 
The important thing about each people is not its race, but its kind of 
culture, and where that culture came from. 

Additional, for students who wish wider reading : Hawes, Crete the 
Fore-runner of Greece ; or Baikie, Sea Kings of Crete. 




Uronze Dagger from Mycenae, inlaid with gold 



CHAPTER VII 

THE COMING OF THE ACHAEANS 

About 1500 B.C. bands of tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, semi- Barbarian 
barbarous Achaeans from the north, drawn by the splendor ^^^^^^^ 
and riches of the south, broke into the Aegean lands, as northern north 
barbarians many times since have broken into southern Europe. 
Some fortunate chance had given these mighty-limbed strangers 
a knowledge of iron; and now, armed with long iron swords, 
and bringing their flocks and herds, with their women and 
children in rude carts drawn by horses, they established them- 
selves among the short, dark, bronze- weaponed natives, became 
their masters, dwelt in their cities, married their women, and 
possessed the land. 

This occupation was a slow process, working unrecorded 
misery on generation after generation of the gentler, peace- 
loving Aegeans. For the most part, the Achaeans filtered 
in, band by band, seizing a valley or an island at a time. Occa- 
sionally, however, large armies warred long and desperately 
about some stronghold of the old civilization. Knossos had 
never had walls : it had trusted for defense to its position on an 
island and to its sea-power; and it fell early before fleets of 
Achaean sea-rovers. The ruins show that it was destroyed 
by fire about 1500. In walled cities like Mycenae, on the other 
hand, the old culture lived on for three or four centuries more. 
The Greek legends of the Trojan War were probably based on 
one of the closing struggles. 

Our knowledge of the Achaeans comes largely from the so- Troy and 
called "Homeric poems," the Iliad and the Odyssey. The later Lenis™^"*^ 
Greeks believed that these were composed about 1000 B.C. 

91 



92 THE GREEKS 

by a blind minstrel ^ named Homer. Scholars now believe that 
each collection was made up of many ballads sung originally 
by different bards at different times. The Greeks were late 
in learning to write; and the poems were not put into manu- 
script until about 600 B.C. ; but most of them certainly had 
been handed down orally from father to son for centuries before 
that time. The Iliad describes part of a ten-year siege of Troy 
by Achaean chieftains from all parts of Greece. The Odyssey 
tells the adventures and wanderings of Odysseus (Ulysses), 
one of the heroes, in the return from that war. Whether or 
not there was a Trojan War, the poems certainly tell us much 
about the customs and ideas of the Greeks of 1100 B.C.; and 
the pictures of Greek life in them have been confirmed by 
recent excavation of remains in the soil. 

Modern scholars in Greek history neglected the study of 
remains in the soil for twenty years after such investigation 
had revealed much forgotten history in the Euphrates valley. 
The discoveries in Crete (p. 83) were begun in 1895, by 
Arthur Evans, a young Englishman; but the first explorer in 
this field in Greek lands was Dr. Henry Schliemann. 

Schliemann grew up in a little German village, where his father 
was the pastor, amid many stories of fairies and of buried magic 
treasure in the mountains round about. His father told him the 
Homeric stories, and once showed him a fanciful picture of the 
huge "Walls of Troy." When the child was told that no one 
now knew just where Troy had stood, and that the city had left 
no traces, he insisted that such walls must have left remains 
that could be uncovered by digging ; and his father playfully 
agreed that sometime Henry should find them. Later, the boy 
learned that the learned scholars of his day did not believe that 
"Troy" had ever existed. This aroused in him a fierce resent- 
ment ; and to carry out his childhood dream of finding the 
great walls of Homer's city became the passion of his life. He 

1 In early times, a poet did not write his poems : he chanted them, to the 
accompaniment of a harp, at festivals or at the meals of chieftains. Such 
a poet is called a minstrel, or bard, or harper. 



SCHLIEMANN'S DISCOVERIES 93 

was very poor. Six years he worked as a grocer's boy ; then, 
for many years more as clerk for various larger firms. He 
studied zealously, learning many languages ; and this led 
employers to send him to foreign countries on business. In 
this way he found opportunities to amass wealth for himself, 
so that at the age of forty-eight he was ready to begin his real 
work. 

In 1870 Dr. Schliemann began excavations at a little village Excavations 
in "Troy -land," on a mound of earth three miles inland from a* Troy 
the shore. The explorations continued more than twenty years 
and disclosed the remains of nine distinct towns, one above an- 
other. The oldest, on native rock, some fifty feet below the 
present surface, was a rude village of the Stone Age. The 
second, thought by Schliemann to be Homer's Troy, showed 
powerful walls, a citadel that had been destroyed by fire, and 
a civilization marked by bronze weapons and gold ornaments. 
We know now that this city belonged to the early Aegean age, 
and that it passed away more than a thousand years before 
Homer's time. Above it came the remains of three inferior 
settlements, and then — the sixth layer from the bottom — a 
much larger and finer city, which had perished in conflagration 
some 1 100 or 1200 years before Christ. Explorations, after 
Schliemann's death, proved this sixth city to be the Troy 
described so fully in the Iliad. 

Above this Homeric Troy came an old Greek city, a 
magnificent city of the time of Alexander the Great, a 
Roman city, and, finally, the squalid Turkish village of to- 
day. The position of these towns commanded the trade be- 
tween the Black Sea regions and the Aegean (map, p. 80). 
This accounts, probably, for the succession of cities there, 
and perhaps for the destruction of some of them in war by 
trade-rivals. 

The tall, fair, yellow-haired Achaeans of the Homeric poems 
left no trace among the Greeks of history a few centuries later. 



94 THE EARLY GREEKS 

Their blood was absorbed into that of the more numerous and 
better-accHmated Aegeans among whom they settled, and the 
Greeks of later history were short and dark. But first the 
Achaeans had imposed their language on the conquered people/ 
as conquerors usually do. The change in language, and the 
ignorance of the invading barbarians, explains the loss of the 
Aegean art of writing — which probably had been known only 
to a small class of scribes. Most of the art and refinement 
of the old civilization also perished. But much of the customs 
and beliefs of the common people survived, to mingle with 
those of the conquerors. 

^ Some Aegean words survived in the later Greek. Thus the Greek 
word for bath-tub comes from the older language. What fact in civilization 
is suggested by this fact in language ? 



CHAPTER VIII 

GREEK CIVILIZATION IN HOMERIC DAYS 

About 1100-1000 B.C. 

The early Greeks, as we find them when Aegeans and Achaeans Tribe and 
had blended, were divided into many tribes, each composed of 
people living in one neighborhood and believing in a common 
ancestor. A tribe was made up of clans (gentes). A clan was 
a group of real kindred, a sort of enlarged family. Some clans 
had a score of members ; some, many score. The nearest 
descendant of the forefather of the clan, counting from oldest 
son to oldest son, was the clan-elder, — a kind of "priest-king" ; 
and the clan-elder of the leading clan in the tribe was the tribal 
"priest-king." 

The tribe usually settled in separate clan villages in the valleys Tribal cita- 
about some convenient hill. On the hilltop was the meeting .-jfto elder 
place for their common worship; and a ring wall, at a con- 
venient part of the slope, easily turned this sacred place into a 
citadel. In hilly Greece many of these citadels grew up near to- 
gether; and so, very early, groups of tribes combined further. 
Perhaps several united peacefully ; perhaps one of a group 
would conquer the others and compel them to tear down their 
separate citadels and to move their temples to its center. This 
made a city. The chief of the leading tribe then became the 
priest-king of the city. 

The later Athenians had a tradition that in very early times 
the hero Theseus founded their city by bringing together four 
tribes living in Attica. 

If the cities could have combined into larger units, Greece 
might have become a "nation-state," like modern Eng- 
land or France. But the Greeks, in the time of their glory, 

95 



96 HOMER'S GREEKS 

never got beyond a city-state. To them the same word 
meant "city" and "state." To each Greek, his city was 
his country. The political ^ relations of one city with 
another five miles away were foreign relations, as much 
as its dealings with the king of Persia. Wars, therefore, 
were constant. 

Government Each city, like each of the old tribes, had a king, a council 
°L*^! t^^^ of chiefs, and a popular assembly. 

The king was leader in loar, judge in peace, and priest at all 
times ; but his power was much limited by custom. 

The council of chiefs were originally the clan elders and the 
members of the royal family. Socially they were the king's 
equals ; and in government he could not do anything in defiance 
of their wish. 

The common freemen came together for worship and for 
games ; and sometimes the king called them together, to listen 
to plans that had been adopted by him and the chiefs. There 
the freemen shouted approval or muttered disapproval. They 
could not start new movements. There were no regular meet- 
ings and few spokesmen; and the general reverence for the 
chiefs made it a daring deed for a common man to brave them. 

However, even in war, when the authority of the nobles was 
greatest, the Assembly had to be persuaded: it could not he 
ordered.^ Homer shows that sometimes a common man ven- 
tured to oppose the "kings." In an Assembly of the army 
before Troy, the discouraged Greeks break away to launch 
their ships and return home. Odysseus hurries among them, 

1 "Political" means "relating to government." 

2 King, Council of Chiefs, and popular Assembly were the germs of later 
monarchic, oligarchic, and democratic government. A monarchy, in the first 
meaning of the word, is a state ruled by one man, a "monarch." An oli- 
garchy is a state ruled by a "few," or by a small class. A democracy is a 
state where the whole people govern. In ancient history the words are used 
with these meanings. Sometimes "aristocracy " is used with much the same 
force as oligarchy. (In modern times the word "monarchy" is used some- 
times of a government like England, which is monarchic only in form, but 
which really is a democracy.) 



MANNERS AND MORALS 97 

and by persuasion and threats forces them back to the Assembly, 
until only Thersites bawls on, — " Thersites, uncontrolled of 
speech, whose mind was full of words wherewith to strive against 
the chiefs. Hateful was he to Achilles above all, and to Odys- 
seus, for them he was wont to revile. But now with shrill shout 
he poured forth his upbraidings even upon goodly Agamemnon" 
[the chief cpmmander of the Greeks]. Odysseus, it is true, 
rebukes Thersites sternly and smites him into silence, while 
the crowd laughs. "Homer" sang to please the chieftains, 
his patrons, — and so he represents Thersites as a cripple, ugly 
and unpopular; but there must have been popular opposi- 
tion to the chiefs, now and then, or the minstrel wouldnot have 
mentioned such an incident at all.^ 

Society was simple. The Homeric poems speak of wealth A simple 
and luxury in a few places, but these are marked exceptions to ^°^^^^ 
the rule. When the son of Odysseus, in the poem, visits a 
city where some of the old Mycenaean greatness survives, he 
is astounded by the splendor of the palace, with its " gleam as 
of sun and moon," lighted as it was by torches held by massive 
golden statues, — the walls blazing with bronze and with glit- 
tering friezes of blue glass, — and he whispers to his com- 
panion : — 

"Mark the flashing of bronze through the echoing halls, and the 
flashing of gold and of amber and of silver and of ivory. Such like, 
methinks, is the court of Olympian Zeus. . . . Wonder comes over 
me as I look." 

Mighty Odysseus had built his palace with his own hands, 
and it has been well called — from the poet's description — 
"a rude farmhouse, where swine wallow in the court." The 
one petty island, too, in which Odysseus was head-king, held 
scores of yet poorer "kings." So, too, when Odysseus is ship- 
wrecked on an island, he finds the daughter of the chief king 
— the princess Nausicaa — doing a washing, with her band of 

1 Davis' Readings, I, No. .33, reproduces the best Homeric account of an 
'Assembly" in war time. It contains also the Thersites story complete. 



98 



HOMER'S GREEKS 



maidens. The poet tells how they tread out the dirt by tram- 
pling the clothes with their bare feet in the water of a running 
brook ; and just before he pictured the " queen" busy in gather- 
ing together the palace linen for this event. 

Manners were harsh. In the Trojan War when the Trojan 
hero, Hector, fell, the Greek kings gathered about the dead 
body, "and no one came who did not add his wound." The 
commonest boast was to have given a foe's body to be half 
devoured by the packs of savage dogs that hung about the 
camp for such morsels. 

The chiefs were borne to the combat in chariots. They were 
clad in bronze armor, and fought with bow and spear. A 
battle was little more than a series of single combats between 
these warriors. The common freemen followed on foot, without 
armor or effective weapons, and counted for little except to 
kill the wounded and strip the slain. Ordinary prisoners became 
slaves. When chiefs were taken, they were murdered in cold 
blood, unless they could tempt the victor to spare them for 
ransom. Female captives, even princesses, expected no better 
fate than slavery. 

On the other hand, there are hints of natural and happy 
family life, of joyous festivals, and games and dances, and of 
wholesome, contented work (Davis' Readings, I, No. 35). 

The mass of the people were small farmers, though their 
houses were grouped in villages.^ Even the kings tilled their 
farms, in part at least, with their own hands. Odysseus boasts 
that he can drive the oxen at the plow and "cut a clean fur- 
row" ; and when the long days begin he can mow all day with 
the crooked scythe, "pushing clear until late eventide." There 
had appeared a class of miserable landless freemen (perhaps 
dispossessed Aegean farmers) who hired themselves to farmers. 
When the ghost of Achilles (the invincible Greek chieftain) 
wishes to name to Odysseus the most unhappy lot among 
mortals, he selects that of the hired servant (p. 102). Slaves 
were few, except about the great chiefs. There they served as 
1 For farm life, see an extract in Davis' Readings, I, No. 39. 



MANNERS AND MORALS 99 

household servants and as farm hands ; and they seem to have 
been treated kindly. When Odysseus returned from his twenty 
years of war and wandering, he made himself known first to a 
faithful swineherd and to one other slave — and " they threw 
their arms round wise Odysseus and passionately kissed his 
face and neck. So likewise did Odysseus kiss their heads and 
hands." 

Artisans and smiths were found among the retainers of the 
great chiefs. They were highly honored, but their skill was 
far inferior to that of the Aegean age. Some shields and 
inlaid weapons of that earlier period had passed into the hands 
of the Achaeans ; and these were always spoken of as the work 
of Hephaestus, the god of fire and of metal work. 

A separate class of traders had not arisen. The chiefs, in the 
intervals of farm labor, turned to trading voyages now and 
then, and did not hesitate to increase their profits by •piracy. 
It was no offense to ask a stranger whether he came as a pirate 
or for peaceful trade {Odyssey, iii, 60-70). 

The early Aegeans worshiped ancestors, and hurled their Religion 
dead in altar-tombs. They had also many nature-deities, 
especially Demeter, the great Earth-Mother, and Poseidon, 
god of the sea. Homer's Achaeans adored especially a sun god, 
burned their dead, and show no trace of ancestor worship. 
Before long, however, the old religion was restored, with some 
mixture of Achaean ideas. Let us look at the Greek religion 
that resulted. 

The clan religion was a worship of clan ancestors. If pro- Of the 
vided with pleasing meals at proper times and invoked with 
magic formulas (so the belief ran), the ghosts of the ancient 
clan elders would continue to aid their children. The food was 
actually meant for the ghost. The clan tomb was the altar. 
Milk and wine were poured into a hollow in the ground, while 
the clan elder, the only lawful priest, spoke sacred formulas 
inviting the dead to eat. Travelers describe similar practices 
among primitive peoples to-day. A Papuan chief prays : 



clan 



100 



THE EARLY GREEKS 



" Compassionate Father ! Here is food for you. Eat it, and 
be kind to us ! " 

In like manner, the famihes of the clan each came to have its 
sepajate family worship of ancestors. The hearth was the family 
altar. Near it were grouped the Penates, or images of household 
gods who watched over the family. The father was the priest. 
Before each meal, he poured out on the hearth the libation, 
or food-offering, to the family gods and asked their blessing. 
The family tomb was near the house, "so that the sons," says 
Euripides (a later Greek poet; p. 172), "in entering and leaving 
their dwelling, might always meet their fathers and invoke them." 

Originally, no doubt, the family tomb was under the 
hearth. Cf. the Cave Men, p. 7. This explains why 
the hearth became an altar, and why food offerings to 
ancestors continued to be made there all through Greek 
and Roman history. 

But the religion of which we hear most in Greek literature 
grew out of a nature worship. The lively fancy of the Greeks 
personified the forces of nature in the forms and characters 
of men and women — built in a somewhat more majestic mold 
than human men. The great gods lived on cloud-capped 
Mount Olympus, and passed their days in feasting and laughter 
and other pleasures. When the chief god, Zeus, slept, things 
sometimes went awry, for other gods plotted against his plans. 
His wife Hera was exceedingly jealous — for which she had much 
reason — and the two had many a family wrangle. Some of 
the gods went down to aid their favorites in war, and were 
wounded by human weapons. The twelve great Olympian 
deities were (Latin names in parentheses) : 

Zeus (Jupiter), the supreme god; god of the sky; "father of gods 

and men." 
Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea. 

Apollo, the sun god ; god of wisdom, poetry, prophecy, and medicine. 
. Ares (Mars), god of war. 
Hephaestus (Vulcan), god of fire — the lame smith. 



THE OLYMPIAN RELIGION 101 

Hermes (Mercury), god of the wind; messenger; god of cunning, of 

thieves, and of merchants. 
Hera (Juno), sister and wife of Zeus ; queen of the sky. 
Athene (Minerva), goddess of wisdom ; female counterpart of Apollo. 
Artemis (Diana), goddess of the moon, of maidens, and of hunting. 
Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love and beauty. 
Demeter (Ceres), the earth goddess — controlling fertility. 
Hestia (Vesta), the deity of the home ; goddess of the hearth fire. 

All the world about was peopled, in Greek imagination, by a 
multitude of lesser local gods and demigods — spirits of spring 
and wood and river and hill — all of whom, too, were personi- 
fied as glorious youths or maidens. To give the gods beautiful 
human forms, rather than the revolting bodies of lowlr animals 
and reptiles (p. 37), was an advance, even though it fell far short 
of the noble religious ideas of the Hebrews and Persians. In a 
multitude of legends the Greek poets surrounded these gods 
with a delightful charm which has made their stories a lasting 
possession of the world's culture. And, along with this beauty, 
noble religious thoughts sometimes appear. In the Odyssey 
the poet exclaims : " Verily, the blessed gods love not froward 
deeds, but they reverence justice and the righteous acts of 
men." 

As to the future life the Greeks believed in a place of terrible Ideas of a 
punishment (Tartarus) for a few great offenders against the ^^^ 
gods, and in an Elysium of supreme pleasure for a very few others 
particularly favored by the gods. But for the mass of men the 
future life was to be " a washed-out copy of the brilliant life on 
earth" — its pleasures and pains both shadowy. Thus Odys- 
seus tells how he met Achilles in the home of the dead : 

" And he knew me straightway, when he had drunk the dark blood [of 
a sacrifice to the dead] ; yea, and he wept aloud, and shed big tears as 
he stretched forth his hands in his longing to reach me. But it might 
not be, for he had now no steadfast strength nor power at all in moving, 
such as was aforetime in his supple limbs. . . . But lo, other spirits 
of the dead that be departed stood sorrowing, and each one asked 
concerning those that were dear to them" {Odyssey, xi, 390 ff.). And 
in their discourse, Achilles exclaims sorrowfully : 



102 THE EARLY GREEKS 

"Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death, O great Odysseus. 
Rather would I live on ground as the hireling of another, even with a 
lack-land man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all 
the dead." 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, I, 
Nos. 33-38. Additional: Bury, pp. 69-79. The legends of heroes 
and demigods, like Hercules, Theseus, and Jason, are retold charmingly 
for young people by Hawthorne, Gayley, Guerber, and Kingsley. 



I 



CHAPTER IX 

FROM THE TROJAN TO THE PERSIAN 'WAR 

1000-500 B.C. 

I. THE DORIANS AND NEW GREEK MIGRATIONS 

About 1000 B.C. Greek civilization was checked again, for a The Dorian 
hundred years, by invasions from the north. The new bar- '^o^i^^st 
barians called themselves Dorians. Their speech was much 
like the Achaean ; and probably they were merely a rear-guard 
of that former invasion, delayed somewhere in the north for 
two or three centuries. In this interval they had invented 
better methods in war. They fought now as heavy-armed 
infantry in close ranks, with long spears projecting from the 
array of shields. The Achaeans, who fought still in loose 
Homeric fashion (p. 98), could not stand against this disci- 
plined onset. 

The conquering Dorians settled mainly in the Peloponnesus. And other 
The tribes that they drove out jostled other tribes into motion ™'sra ions 
over all Greece, and fugitives settled all the desirable unoccupied 
spots on the Aegean islands. Meanwhile the Peloponnesus 
itself, the old center of both Aegean and Achaean glory, forever 
lost its leadership in all but war. When civilization took a new 
start among the Greeks, soon after 900 B.C.,. it was from new 
centers, especially in Attica and in Asia Minor. 

Attica was easily defended from attack (map after page 90) . lonians in 
The land side of the peninsula was guarded by rugged moun- 
tains, broken only by few and narrow passes. Accordingly 
it was the one part of southern Greece not overrun by the 
Dorians. The Achaeans there — and in much of southern 
Greece — after mixing with the older Aegean inhabitants, had 
come to call themselves lonians. Many Ionian clans from the 

103 



104 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 



Colonization 
of the coast 
of Asia 
Minor 



Peloponnesus sought refuge in Attica. The richest of these 
were adopted into Attic tribes, and made the people there 
more progressive and open to outside influence. 

Attica could not support all the newcomers ; and, after a brief 
stay, many passed on across the Aegean, to the coast of Asia 
Minor. There they established themselves in twelve great cities, 
of which the most important were Miletus and Ephesus (map 
after page 80). All the middle district of that coast took the 
name Ionia, and looked upon Ionian Athens as a mother-city. * 

North of Ionia, Greek Aeolian tribes took possession of the 
Asia Minor coast ; and the southern portion was seized finally 
by roving Dorians who crossed the sea by way of Crete and 
Rhodes, colonizing the chain of islands across the south of the 
Aegean as they came. Thus the whole eastern shore of the 
Aegean, as well as all its islands, became Greek (map after 
page 80). 



Oneness of 
feeling 
among all 
Hellenes 



Due to 
language 



While the Greeks were so dispersing in space, they were 
beginning to grow together in feeling. The Iliad does not make 
it clear whether "Homer" looked upon the Trojans as Greeks 
or not. Apparently he cared little about the question. Two 
or three hundred years later, that would have been the first 
question for every Greek. The Greeks remained in wholly 
separate "states" (p. 96); but they had come to believe in a 
kinship with one another, to take pride in their common civiliza- 
tion, and to set themselves apart from the rest of the world. 

The chief forces which had created this oneness of feeling 
were (1) language and literature, and (2) the Olympian religion, 
with its games and oracles. 

1. The Greeks understood one another's dialects, while the 
men of other speech about them they called "Barbarians," or 
babblers {Bar'-har-oi). This likeness of language made it possible 
for all Greeks to possess the same literature. The poems of 
"Homer" were sung and recited in every village for centuries; 
and the universal pride in Homer, and in the glories of the later 
literature, had much to do in binding the Greeks into one people. 



ONE PEOPLE 



105 



The poets, too, invented a system of fables, representing the four 
great divisions of Hellenes — Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans, 
and lonians — as descended from a common ancestor, Hellen. 

2. The features of the Olympian religion that helped especially And to 
to bind Greeks together were three — the Olympic Games, the ^^^^si**" 
Delphic Oracle, and the various Amphictyonies. 

To the great festivals of some of the gods, men flocked from TheOlympic 
all Hellas. This was especially true of the Olympic games. S^^^^ 




Ruins of the Entrance to the Stadium (athletic field) at Olympia. 



These were celebrated each fourth year at Olympia, in Elis, in 
honor of Zeus . The contests consisted of foot races, chariot races, 
wrestling, and boxing. The victors were felt to have won the 
highest honor open to any Greek. They received merely an olive 
wreath at Olympia; but at their homes their victories were 
commemorated by inscriptions and statues. Only Greeks 
could take part in the contests, and there was a strong feehng 
that all wars between Greek states should be suspended dur- 
ing the month of the festival. 



106 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 B.C. 



To these games came merchants, to secure the best market 
for rare wares. Heralds proclaimed treaties there — as the 
best way to make them known through all Hellas. As civiliza- 
tion grew, poets, orators, and artists gathered there; and 
gradually the intellectual contests and exhibitions became the 
most important feature of the meeting. The oration or poem 
or statue which was praised by the crowds at Olympia had 









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Ruins of Stadium at Delphi. — Second only to the Olympic Games was 
the Festival of Apollo at Delphi. 

received the approval of the most select and intelligent judges 
that could be brought together an^^where in the world. 

The four-year periods between the games were called Olym- 
piads. These periods finally became the Greek units in counting 
time : all events were dated from what was believed to be the 
first recorded Olympiad, beginning in 776 B.c.^ 

1 An admirable account of the Olympic Games is given in Davis' Readings, 
I, No. 44. The student will enjoy even more the vivid picture in the same 
author's novel, A Victor of Salamis. 



ONE PEOPLE 107 

Apollo, the sun god, was also the god of prophecy. One The Delphic 
of his chief temples was at Delphi, far up the slopes of Mount ^^^^^^ 
Parnassus, amid wild and rugged scenery. From a fissure in 
the ground, within the temple, volcanic gases poured forth. 
A priestess would inhale the gas until she passed into a trance 
(or seemed to do so) ; and, while in this state, she was supposed 
to see into the future, by the aid of the god. The advice of this 
"oracle" was sought hy men and by governments throughout all 
Hellas (Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 41-43). 

There was an ancient league of Greek tribes to protect the 
temple at Delphi. This was known as the Amphictyonic League 
(league of "dwellers-round-about")- Smaller amphictyonies, 
for the protection of other temples, were common in Greece. 
But the Delphic Amphictyony was a religious union of the whole 
Greek people. All important states sent delegates to its 
"Council," at regular times; and every division of the Greek 
race felt that it had a share in the oracle and in its League. 

For Further Reading. — Besides the references to Davis' Read- 
ings in the text, see also No. 46 on the founding of a colony. For 
modern treatments, see Bury, 86-106, 116-117 (on colonies), and 
159-161 (on oracles and festivals) ; or Kimball-Bury, Student's Greece, 
chs. ii, iii. A longer treatment may be found in Keller's Homeric Life. 

II. REVIVAL OF INDUSTRY, ART, AND SCIENCE 

The civilization which the Achaeans and Dorians had de- Phoenician 
stroyed was restored to them, in part, by the Phoenicians, influence 
After the overthrow of the Cretan sea-kings, about 1500 B.C., 
Phoenicia for a thousand years was almost the only sea-power 
of the Mediterranean. Along the Greek coasts and islands her 
traders bartered with the inhabitants (much as European traders 
did three centuries ago with American Indians), tempting them 
to high payments for strange wares — lions and other beasts 
carved in little ivory ornaments, purple robes, blue-glass bottles, 
or perhaps merely colored glass trinkets — and counting it 
best gain of all if they could lure curious maidens aboard their 
black ships for distant slave markets. In return, they made 



108 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 B.C. 



many an unintended payment. Language shows that they 
gave the Greeks the names, and so no doubt the use, of Hnen, 
myrrh, frankincense, cinnamon, soap, lyres, cosmetics, and 
tablets. The forgotten art of writing, too, they introduced again. 

But the lively Greeks were not slavish imitators. They 
added vowel letters to the Phoenician signs, and so first com- 
pleted the alphabet. Soon they began to manufacture the 
Phoenician trade articles for themselves, and finally they became 
successful rivals in trade. 

About 800 B.C. the Greeks entered on a new colonizing move- 
ment, which continued two hundred years (800-600 B.C.), and 
doubled the area of Greek settlement, spreading it far beyond 
its Aegean home. The cause, this time, was not war. The 
neiv colonies were founded largely for trading stations, — to capture 
trad? from the Phoenicians, — and at the same time to provide 
the crowded and discontented farming class with new land. 
Miletus sent colony after colony to the north shore of the Black 
Sea, to control the corn trade there. Sixty Greek towns fringed 
that sea and its straits. The one city of Chalcis, in Euboea, 
planted thirty-two colonies on the Thracian coast, to secure 
the gold and silver mines of that region. On the west, Sicily 
became almost wholly Greek, and southern Italy took the proud 
name of Magna Graecia (Great Greece). Indeed, settlements 
were sown from end to end of the Mediterranean. Among the 
more important of- the colonies were Syracuse in Sicily, Taren- 
tum, Syharis, and Croton in Italy, Corcyra near the mouth of the 
Adriatic, Massilia (Marseilles) in Gaul, Olynthus in Thrace, 
Cyrene in Africa, Byzantium at the Black Sea's mouth, and 
Naucratis in Egypt (p. 18). 

The colonists ceased to be citizens in their old homes. Each 
new city enjoyed complete independence. It kept a strong 
friendship for its "metropolis" (mother city); but there was 
no political union between them. 

While trade was sowing cities along the distant Mediterranean 
shores, it also brought an industrial revival in old Greece. 
The ships that sailed forth from Athens or Corinth or Miletus 



I 



ART, POETRY, PHILOSOPHY 



109 



carried metal work, vases, and textiles, and brought home, 
from the Black Sea regions, amber, fish, grain, and sometimes 
products of the distant East that had reached the Black Sea 
by caravan. To keep up a supply for the export trade, the 
Greek artisans had to produce more and more, and more and 
more improve their products — as with Phoenicia earlier 
(p. 75). For just one instance, — in Athens one large section of 
the city was given wholly 
to great factories in which 
beautiful pottery was made 
(see "Ceramicus" in the 
plan of Athens, p. 157) ; 
and vases of this period, 
signed by artists in these 
factories, are unearthed to- 
day all the way from cen- 
tral Asia Minor to north- 
ern Italy. 

Oriental vase-painting 
had delighted in forms 
half-human half-beast, as 
Oriental sculpture did. 
But Greeks now dropped 
all unnatural features from 
their art — first of all 
peoples — and found in- 
creasing satisfaction in depicting the beauty of the human 
body, with or without draperies. The artist first colored the 
vase black, and then painted his designs in red on that back- 
ground. He began, too, to see how to draw figures in per- 
spective. As in earlier times, he liked to picture scenes from 
the legends about the gods and demigods ; but a growing in- 
terest in everyday life is shown by an increasing proportion 
of scenes from the work and play of common men (cuts on pp. 
179, 181, 192). 




A Black Attic Vase of the sixth century 
B.C., with two warriors painted in red. 
The artist, Amasis, has signed his name 
twice. This amphora is now in the 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 



Vase- 
paintings 
and what 
they teach 



110 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 



Architecture Architecture in this period began to show a character distinct 
from that of Oriental architecture on which it was founded. 
Between 600 and 500, it made great advance, especially in 
Athens and in the cities of Ionia. Its chief use was in building 
temples for the gods, rather than in palaces as in the Cretan 
age. In every Greek city, through the rest of Greek history, the 
temples were the most beautiful and most noticeable structures. 
The plan of the Greek temple was very simple. People did 
not gather within the building for service, as in our churches. 
They only brought offerings there. The inclosed part of the 
building, therefore, was small and rather dark, — containing 




Ground Plan of the Temple op Theseus at Athens. 



only one or two room.s, for the statues of the god and the altar 
and the safe-keeping of the offerings. It was merely the god's 
house, where people could visit him when they wished to ask 
favors. 

In shape, the temple was rectangular. The roof projected 
beyond the inclosed part of the building, and was supported not 
by walls, but by a row of columns running around the four sides 
The gables (pediments) in front and rear were low, and wer 
filled with relief statuary, as was also the frieze, between thi 
cornice and the columns. Sometimes there was a second friezi 
upon the walls of the building inside the colonnade. 

The building took much of its beauty from its colonnades 
The hint was taken from Egypt ; but the Greeks so far sur 



ART, POETRY, PHILOSOPHY 



111 



passed all previous builders in the use of the column, and in 
shaping the column itself, that they made these features pe- 
culiarly Greek. The chief differences in the styles of architecture 
were marked by the columns and their capitals. According to 
differences in these features, a building 
is said to belong to the Doric or Ionic 
"order." Later there was developed a 
Corinthian order. (See cuts herewith, 
and on pp. 114, 116, 117.) 




Doric Column. — From 
the Temple of Theseus 
at Athens. 

1, the shaft ; 2, the capital ; 
3, the frieze; 4, cornice; 
5, part of roof, showing the 
low slope. 





Ionic Order. 



In poetry there was more progress even than in architecture. 
The earliest Greek poetry had been made up of ballads, cele- 
brating wars and heroes. These ballads were stories in verse, 
sung by wandering minstrels. The greatest of such composi- 
tions rose to epic poetry, of which the Iliad and Odyssey are the 
noblest examples. Their period is called the Ejnc Age. 

In the seventh and sixth centuries, most poetry consisted of 
odes and songs in a great variety of meters. Love and pleasure 



Poetry 



112 HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 

are the favorite themes, and the poems describe the feelings 
of the writer rather than the deeds of some one else. These 
poems were intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the 
lyre (a sort of harp). They are therefore called lyrics; and the 
seventh and sixth centuries are known as the Lyric Age. 

It is possible to name here only a few of the many famous 
lyric poets of that age. Sappho, of Lesbos, wrote exquisite 
love songs, of which a few fragments survive. Her lover 
(another Lesbian poet) described her as "Pure Sappho, violet 
tressed, softly smiling." The ancients were wont to call her 
"the poetess," just as they referred to Homer as "the poet." 
Pindar, the greatest of the lyric poets, came from Boeotia. He 
delighted especially to celebrate the rushing chariots and 
glorious athletes of the Olympic games. 

Two other poets of this age represent another kind of poetry. 
One was Thespis, at Athens, who wrote the first plays. The 
other, Hesiod of Boeotia, lived about 800 B.C. He wove together 
into a long poem (the Theogony) old stories of the creation and 
of the birth and relationship of the gods ; and he wrote also 
remarkable home-like poems on farm life (J^'^orhs and Days) 
which made a sort of textbook on agriculture (Davis' Readings I, 
No. 39). Hesiod himself was a hard-toiling farmer, struggling 
to win a bare living from the soil ; and his pictures of the dreary 
life of a Greek peasant help us to understand the colonizing 
movement of his time. 

In Ionia, in the sixth century B.C., men first began fearlessly 
to try to explain the origin of the universe. T hales, of Miletus, 
taught that all things came from water : that is, from the 
condensation of an original all-pervading moisture. One of 
his disciples affirmed that the world had evolved from a fiery 
ether. Another taught that the higher animal forms had 
developed from lower forms. These explanations were merely 
daring guesses ; but the great thing is that men should have 
begun to think about natural causes at all, in place of the old, 
supposed supernatural causes, for all that happens. Thales 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 113 

argued that the movements of sun and stars were determined, 
not by the whims of gods who dwelt in them, as people thought, 
but hy fixed natural law; and he proved his argument by pre- 
dicting an eclipse of the sun — which came off as he had fore- 
told.i 

In Magna Graecia, Pythagoras sought the explanation of the 
universe, not in any kind of matter, but in Number, or Har- 
mony. This it was, he said, that had brought order out of 
primeval chaos. His disciples, naturally, paid much attention 
to mathematics ; and to Pythagoras himself is ascribed the fa- 
mous demonstration in geometry that the square on the long- 
est side of a right-triangle is equal to the sum of the squares 
on the two other sides. The Pythagoreans, too, especially 
connected "philosophy" (the name for their study of the begin- 
nings of things) with human conduct. The harmony in the 
outer world, they urged, should be matched by harmony in the 
soul of man. Indeed, all these sages taught lofty moral truths 
far above the moral level of Greek religion (Davis' Readings, 
I, No. 98). Xenophanes of Ionia, in the one fragment of his 
speech that has come down to us, spoke of " God, one and change- 
less," — "not in body like unto mortals, nor in mind." 

III. THE "PEOPLE" RULE AT ATHENS 

Between 1000 and 500 b.c. the "kings" disappeared from all The kings go 
Greek cities except Sparta and Argos — and there they kept 
little but their dignity. Everywhere the nobles had been 
growing in wealth. They controlled practically all the com- 
merce (p. 109), the profits of which had come to be immense. 
As the only capitalists, they loaned money to the ordinary 
farmers — on exorbitant interest, as high as twenty per cent a 
year — and took farm after farm on mortgage foreclosure, 
perhaps enslaving also the farmers and their families. Not 
content with so oppressing the masses below them, they used 

1 Thales, we know, had visited Egypt ; and some writers gxiess that he 
had had access to the astronomical observations of the Babylonians. He 
foretold about the time of the eclipse, not the exact hour or minute. 



114 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 



Class 
struggles 



The tyrants 



their increased power to divide among themselves, step by step, 
the old royal authority. The Hovieric vionarchies became oli- 
garchies (p. 96, note). 

In all Greek cities there had come to be a sharp division 
between classes. The wealthy nobles called themselves "the 
few" or "the good" ; and the class below them they called "the 
many " or " the bad." " The many " clamored and complained ; 

but they were too ignorant 
and disunited as yet to 
defend themselves against 
the better-united "few" 
— until the way was made 
easier for them by the " ty- 
rants." 

Usually a tyrant was 
some noble, who, either 
from selfish ambition or 
from deep sympathy with 
the oppressed masses, 
turned against his own or- 
der, to become a champion 
of the despised "many." When, in some crisis, he had made 
himself master of the city by their aid, he tried to keep his 
power by surrounding himself with mercenaries ; but commonly 
he also sought to keep the favor of the masses. The nobles he could 
not hope to conciliate : them he ruined with crushing taxes, or 
exiled or murdered. There is a story that Periander, tyrant 
of Corinth, sent to a friend, the tyrant of Miletus, to ask how 
to govern : for answer, the Milesian merely took the messenger 
through a grain field, striking off all the finest and tallest heads 
as he walked. 

Tyrants first became common about 700 B.C. By the year 
500 they had gone from every city in the Greek peninsula, 
though they were still found sometimes in outlying Greek dis- 
tricts. When the tyrants were overthrown, the .nobles had 
been so weakened that the people had a better chance. In 




A Doric Capital. — lYiiiii a photograph 
of a detail of the Parthenon (p. 170). 



I 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 115 

the Ionian parts of Greece, the next step commonly was a democracy. 
In Dorian Greece, the tyrants were usually followed by an 
aristocracy much broader than the older oligarchy. 

As the Greeks used the word, "tyrant" does not necessarily 
mean a bad or cruel ruler : it means merely a man who seized 
supreme rule by force. The Homeric kings had been revered 
as hereditary priests of the city : their birth gave them certain 
rights and certain duties, in the people's eyes. But the tyrant 
had no sanction but might. Many of them were generous, 
far-sighted rulers, building useful public works, helping to 
develop trade, encouraging art and literature. But some, of 
course, were selfish and vicious ; and all arbitrary rule was hate- 
ful to the Greeks, — so that the oligarchs could usually per- 
suade the people that the murder of a tyrant was a good deed. 

Now we will trace, with a little more detail, this change from 
"the rule of one" to "the rule of many" in Athens. 

Athens was the only city in Attica. In other districts of Athens 
such size there were always several cities. Boeotia had twelve, ^x!-°'^® 
each jealous of one another, and all jealous of Thebes, the city 
largest among them. In Attica, before historical records 
began, the beginnings of many cities had in some way been 
consolidated into one (p. 95). Athens was the true "home" 
of all the free inhabitants of the whole district — the central 
home, though many of them lived, outside the walls, in little 
farming hamlets. 

The heads of the "noble" families (the "well-born") were Kingship 
in the habit of meeting in council on the hill called the Areopagus ^^Q^iig^chy 
(the hill of Ares, god of war). Very early this Council of the 
Areopagus began to choose " archons" ("rulers") from its own 
number to take over the command in war and other important 
parts of the royal power. Gradually the "king" became only 
the city-priest; and in 752 B.C., an elected " king-archbn " 
took over even this religious office. 

By mortgages, by purchase perhaps, by fraud and force 
sometimes, the "well-born" had come also to own nearly all 



116 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 



The oli- the land of Attica. Most of it was tilled for them by tenants. 

the*landand Commonly these were old owners, who had lost their farms on 

enslaved the mortgages and who now paid five sixths the crop for rent. A 

^°°^ bad season, or ravages by hostile bands of invaders, would 

force these tenants to mortgage themselves, since they had no 

more land to mortgage, in order to get food and seed. Interest 

was crushing, — eighteen or twenty per cent a year ; and the 

debts were likely to grow larger and larger. If the debtors 

failed to pay, the noble who held the mortgage could drag them 




The Parthenon To-day ; west front. Doric style. See p. 170. 

off in chains and sell them beyond seas. He could easily find 

other tenants for his land from the needy landless men of Attica. 

" The poor," says Aristotle (a later Greek writer, in an account 

of this period), "were the very bondmen of the rich. . . . 

They were discontented toith every feature of their lot . . . for 

. . . they had no share in anything." 

Attempts at This discontent of the masses, and the quarrels among fac- 

tyranny lead tions of the nobles, gave opportunity to ambitious adventurers ; 

to conccs- 

sions ^^^ (625 B.C.) one young noble seized the citadel of Athens 

with a band of troops, in order to make himself tyrant. The 



I 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 



117 



nobles rallied and crushed this attempt ; but the peril induced 
them to make two concessions to the poorer masses. 

1. The Assembly (p. 96) had come to be a gathering of noble 
families only. Ordinary tribesmen had ceased to attend, and 
were no longer allowed to vote if they did appear. But in 
commercial and manufacturing Athens (p. 109) there were 
coming to be many rich merchants and factory owners outside 
the noble class. To conciliate these men, and to draw them 




Ruins of Temple of Victory at Athens 
See p. 169. 



west front. Ionic style. 



away from the side of the people, the nobles now took into the 
political Assembly all who would buy their own heavy armor 
(shield, helmet, and spear) for the war levy. This Assembly 
decided on peace and war, and once a year it elected the archons 
— though only from among the nobles. The "well-born" 
had shared j^cii't of their power with the wealthy. 

2. Athenian law had been a matter of ancient custom. It was 
not written down, and much of it was known only to the nobles. 
All judges (archons) were nobles ; and they often abused their 
power in order to favor their own class in law suits. The people 



The 

Assembly 

enlarged 



Written 
laws 



118 HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 

had long clamored for a written code. They did not ask yet 
for new laws, but only that the pld laws might be fixed and 
known to all. The nobles had stubbornly resisted this demand. 
But now they gave way. In 621 B.C. Draco, one of the archons, 
engraved the old laws of Athens on wooden blocks and set them 
up where all might see them. 

The result was to make men feel how harsh the old laws were. 
The "laws of Draco," it was said in later times, were "written 
in blood rather than ink." 

The Athenians noxo demanded nciv laws. 

The renewed class struggles, together with the incompetent 
and selfish rule of the nobles, brought the city to the verge of 

ruin. Little Megara, eager for 
Athens' commerce, seized Sala- 
mis (map, page 147), from which 
inland she could readily block- 
ade the port of Athens. At- 
tempts to recapture this place, 
so vital to Athenian security, 
failed miserably ; and the As- 
sembly in despair voted to put 
to death any man who should 
Greek Soldier. propose another expedition. 

Happily Athens had one patriot 
too courageous to quail before this threat. Solon was one of the 
leading nobles, a descendant of the ancient kings. In his youth 
he had been a trader, and had visited distant lands, spending 
some time even in Egypt (p. 44). He was already famous as a 
philosopher, ^ general, and poet. Now he shammed madness — to 
secure indulgence as a crazy man — and, appearing unexpectedly 
in the Assembly, he roused his fellow-citizens by declaiming a 
thrilling patriotic , poem which he had composed. They made 
him their leader, and he saved Athens by recovering Salamis. 

1 One of his famous sayings was "Nothing overinuch." This typifies 
the Greek admiration for moderation in all things. Later times counted 
Solon among the "seven wise men of Greece," 




RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 119 

This brilliant success pointed to Solon as the possible savior Sole Archon 
of Athens from her internal perils. He was known to sympa- (<**"ator) 
thize with the poor. In his poems he had long blamed the greed 
of the nobles and had pleaded for reconciliation between the 
warring classes. The Assembly now made him "sole Archon," 
with supreme authority to remodel the government and the laws. 

Solon used this extraordinary power first to reform economic Economic 
evils. ^ (1) He gave to all tenants the full ownership of the 
lands which they had been renting from the nobles (and which 
in most cases they or their fathers had lost earlier through 
debt) ; and he forbade the ownership in future of more than a 
moderate amount of land by any one man. (2) He freed all 
Athenians who were in slavery in Attica, and forbade the en- 
slaving of any Athenian tribesman in future. (3) He cancelled 
all debts, so as to give distracted Athens a fresh start ; but he 
resisted a wild clamor for the division of all property. 

In later times, the people celebrated these acts by a yearly 
"Festival of the Shaking-off of Burdens." ^ The reforms, it 
was soon seen, went deeper than merely to matters of property. 
(1) So many of the nobles lost their commanding wealth that be- 
fore long they ceased to be a distinct class. Later distinctions in 
Athenian society were mainly between rich and poor. (2) Many 
of the old tenants, now that they owned their farms, could 
afford to buy heavy armor (p. 117), and so could come also 
into the Assembly on a level with its old members. 

And, besides these indirect political changes, Solon next Direct 
reformed the government directly. (1) He created a Senate, or jg{.j.^_ 
Council, to replace the Areopagus as the guiding part of the 
government. This body was to recommend measures to the 
Assembly. The members were chosen each year, by lot, so that 
neither wealth nor birth could control the election. This 

1 Economic means "relating to property" ; it mupt not be confused with 
"economical." 

2 At almost the same date, as a recently discovered inscription shows, a 
Cretan city forbade a creditor to seize a debtor's tools or furniture for debt. 
This very "modern" law indicates that Greek society was waking up to 
the need of reforms like thcise of Solon. 



120 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 



method seems absurd to us ; but it was then looked upon as an 
appeal to the choice of the gods, and its use was preceded by 
religious sacrifices and prayer. The New England Puritans 
sometimes used the lot in a like way. (2) He admitted to the 
Assembly all tribesmen, even the light-armed soldiers, though 
these last were not yet allowed to hold any offices. This en- 
larged Assembly, besides accepting or rejecting proposals of 
the new Council, could now discuss them (and so would soon 
learn to amend them and even to substitute new measures for 
them) ; and besides electing archons, it could try them and 
punish them for misgovernment. 

The Areopagus, too, was henceforth to consist of ex-archons. 
That is, indirectly Solon made it, too, an elective body, besides 
taking away most of its power. It remained a sort of law-court, 
with special oversight over morals, and with power to impose 
fines for extravagance, insolence, or gluttony. 

Solon also made it the duty of every father to teach his sons 
a trade ; limited the wasteful extravagance at funerals — espe- 
cially the amount of wealth that might be buried with the dead ; 
and replaced Draco's bloody laws by milder punishments 
for offenses. In one thing he intensified an unhappy tendency 
of his age : he forbade women to appear in public gatherings. 

Athenian Coinage,' too, dates from Solon. The Ionian cities 
in Asia had used the Lydian coins (p. 65). Solon now improved 
upon that earlier system. He took for the unit the hundredth 
part of a Babylonian mina of silver. This he called a drachma 
("handful," because equal in value to a "handful" of the 
little iron lumps that were used as small change). Large sums 
of money were counted in "talents," and a talent was sixty 
minae, or sixty pounds, of silver, worth about $1100. The 
drachma long remained the chief coin. It was worth about 
twenty cents ; and it survives to-day in the French franc and 
in the krone of Austria and Scandinavia. 

To establish all these changes kept Solon busy through the 
years 594 and 593 b.c. Then, to the surprise of many, he 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 121 

resigned his power. He had really been an "elected tyrant," a true 
or rather a "dictator." His acts were so popular with the <iemocrat 
great mass of the people that he might easily have made him- 
self tyrant for life. But he believed sincerely in democracy. 
For the first time in human history, a man holding vast power 
voluntarily laid it down in order that the people might govern 
themselves. 



At first the outcome seemed to show that Solon had not held Plain, 
to his dictatorship long enough to establish his reforms securely. ^°'^1 . 
A new but fierce strife of factions followed between the Plain 
(the larger land-owners), the Shore (merchants), and the Moun- 
tain (small farmers and shepherds). For thirty years, the city 
was frequently in turmoil and sometimes even in anarchy — 
without regular government. 

Then Pisistratus, a near kinsman of Solon, made himself Pisistratus, 
tyrant, by the aid of the Mountain, and restored order. This ^^^^^ 
was in 560 — two years before Cyrus became king of Persia. 
Twice the aristocracy drove Pisistratus into exile, once for ten 
years. But each time he recovered his power, almost without 
bloodshed, because of the favor of the poor. 

His rule was mild and wise. He lived simply, like other 
citizens. He even appeared in a law court, to answer in a suit 
against him. And he always treated the aged Solon with deep 
respect, despite the latter's steady opposition. Indeed, Pisis- 
tratus governed through the forms of Solon's constitution,^ and 
enforced Solon's laws, taking care only to have his own friends 
elected to the chief offices. He was more like the "boss" of a 
great political "machine" than like a "tyrant." During 
the last period of his rule, however, he did banish many nobles 
and guarded himself by mercenary soldiers. 

Pisistratus encouraged commerce. Indeed he laid the basis 
for Athens' later trade leadership by seizing for her the mouth 
to the Black Sea. He also enlarged and beautified Athens ; 

1 Constitution, here and everywhere in early history, means not a written 
document, as with us, but the general usages of government in practice. 



122 HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 

improved the roads, and built an aqueduct to bring a supply of 
water to the city from the hills ; and he drew to his court a 
brilliant circle of poets, painters, architects, and sculptors, from 
all Hellas. The first written edition of the Homeric poems is 
said to have been put together under his encouragement, and 
Thespis (p. 112) began Greek tragedy at the magnificent festivals 
now instituted to Dionysus (god of wine). The tyrant gave 
new splendor to the public worship, and set up rural festivals 
in various parts of Attica, to make country life more attractive. 
He also divided the estates of banished nobles among land- 
less freemen, and so increased the number of peasant land- 
holders. Says Aristotle (p. 116) : 

"For the same reason [to make rural life attractive] he instituted 
local justices, and often made expeditions in person into the country 
to inspect it, and to settle disputes between persons, that they might not 
come to the city and neglect their farms. It was on one of these prog- 
resses, as the story goes, that Pisistratus had his adventure with the 
man in the district of Hymettus, who was cultivating the spot afterwards 
known as the 'Tax-free Farm.' He saw a man digging at very atony 
ground with a stake, and sent and asked what he got out of such a plot 
of land. 'Aches and pains,' said the man, ' and out of these Pisistratus 
must get his tenth.' Pisistratus was so pleased with the man's frank 
speech and industry that he granted him exemption from taxes." — 
Constitution of Athens, 17. 

In 527, Pisistratus was succeeded by his sons Hippias and 
Hipparchus. Hipparchus was soon murdered, at the cost of 
their own lives, by two youths whom he had insolently injured. 
(In later times these tyrant-slayers were honored by public 
statues and patriotic poems.) ^ 

The rule of Hippias had been kindly, but now he grew cruel 
and suspicious, and Athens became ready for revolt. Clisthenes, 
one of a band of exiled nobles, saw an opportunity to regain 
his home. The temple of Apollo at Delphi had just been 
burned, and Clisthenes engaged to rebuild it. He did so with 
great magnificence, using the finest of marble where the con- 

^ Davis' Readings, I, No. 53. 



free Athens 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 123 

tract had called only for common limestone. After this, when- 
ever the Spartans consulted the oracle, no matter what the 
occasion, they were always ordered by the priestess to "first set 
free the Athenians." The Spartans had no quarrel with Hippias ; 
but repeated commands from the god could not be disregarded. 
In 510, a reluctant Spartan army, with the Athenian exiles, 
expelled the tyrant. 

The Athenians were now stronger than before the rule of Vigor of 
Pisistratus, and better able to govern themselves. The oligar 
chy strove to regain control ; but Clisthenes threw his strength 
upon the side of the people, and drove out the plotters. A 
Spartan army restored them for a moment, but was itself soon 
besieged in the Acropolis and captured. A century later an 
Athenian dramatist (Aristophanes, p. 172) portrayed the Athe- 
nian exultation (and hinted some differences between Athenian 
and Spartan life) in the following lines : 

..." For aU his loud fire-eating, 
The old Spartan got a beating, 
And, in sorry plight retreating, 

Left his spear and shield with me. 
Then, with only his poor shirt on, 
And who knows what years of dirt on, 
With a bristling bush of beard, ■ L 

He slunk away and left us free." \ 

"The Athenians," says Aristotle, "now showed that men 
will fight more bravely for themselves than for a master." The 
Euboeans and Thebans seized this moment of confusion to 
invade Attica from two sides at once ; but the Athenians routed 
them in a double battle in one day, pursued into Euboea, stormed 
Chalcis there, and took for their own city its trade with Thrace 
(p. 108). 

Athens now began a new kind of colonization, sending four cieruchs 

thousand citizens to possess the best land of Chalcis, and to * ^lew kind 

of colony 

serve as a garrison there. • These men retained full Athenian 

citizenship, besides having full control over their own settle- 
ments in their own Assemblies. They were known as cieruchs, 



124 HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 

or out-settlers. In this way Athens found land for her surplus 
population, and fortified her influence abroad. 

Internal Internal jealousies still weakened the city. (1) Plain, Shore, 

ciiifl.rfGls ___ 

due to three ^^^ Mountain disliked and feared one another. (2) The 
evils Assembly voted by tribes, and each tribe voted by clans. 

This custom made it natural for the clans to rally in many 
petty factions about the more powerful chiefs. (3) Athens 
contained 'a large body of resident "strangers," who were not 
citizens at all. Solon's reforms had concerned tribesmen only. 
But, in the ninety years that had followed, the growing trade of 
the city had drawn many aliens there. These men were enter- 
prising and sometimes wealthy ; still, though they lived in the 
city, they had no share in it. No alien could vote or hold office, 
or sue in a law court (except through the favor of some citizen), 
or take part in a religious festival, or marry an Athenian, or even 
own land in Attica. The city usually found it worth while to 
protect his property, in order to attract other strangers ; but he 
had no secure rights. Nor could his son, or his son's son, or any 
later descendant acquire any rights merely by continuing to live in 
Athens. A like condition was found in other Greek cities ; but 
rarely were the aliens so large or so wealthy a class as in commer- 
cial Athens. Foreign war, or the ambition of a would-be tyrant, 
might at any moment make their discontent a peril to the state. 
Clisthenes now came forward with proposals to remedy 
these evils. The Assembly approved his plan and gave him 
authority to carry it out. Accordingly, he marked off Attica 
into a hundred little divisions called demes. Each citizen 
was enrolled in one of these, and his son after him. Member- 
ship in a clan had always been the proof of citizenship. Now 
that proof was to be found in this deme-enrollment. Even the 
cleruchs (above) whom Athens sent out to colonize trading 
posts, and their descendants, always kept their deme-enrollment, 
and, through that, their Athenian citizenship. 

The hundred demes were distributed' among ten " tribes," or | 
wards ; but the ten demes of each tribe were not located close 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS 125 

together. They were scattered as widely as possible. The 
Assembly now voted by these ten "territorial" tribes. This 
one device of Clisthenes did away with much of the old evils. 
(1) A clan could no longer act as a unit, since its members 
made parts, perhaps, of several "tribes." So the influence of 
the clan chiefs declined. (2) Men of the Shore and of the 
Mountain often found themselves united in the same tribe, and 
the old factions died out. (3) While Clisthenes was distribut- 
ing citizens among the new geographical units, he seized the 
chance to enroll the non-citizens also in the demes. Thus he 
made the chief of the old perils to the state into a source of new 
strength. Athens gained both in numbers and, even more, in 
progressive influences. 

It must not be supposed, however, that aliens con- 
tinued to gain admission in the future, as with us, by easy 
naturalization. The act of Clisthenes applied only to 
those then in Athens, and to their descendants. In a few 
years another alien class grew up, with all the old disad- 
vantages. 



Clisthenes also gave the Assembly more power. It now Anew 

democr 
advance 



elected ten "generals" yearly, who took over most of the old ®™°"* ^ 



authority of the archons ; and it was made lawful for any voter 
to introduce new business — without waiting for the Council. 
Clisthenes added also one more device to check faction. This 
was ostracism. Once a year the Assembly was given a chance 
to vote by ballot (on pieces of pottery, "ostraka"), each one 
against any man whom he deemed dangerous to the state. 
If six thousand citizens took part in the vote, then that man 
against ivhom the largest number of the six thousand votes were 
cast had to go into exile. Such exile was felt to be perfectly 
honorable ; and when a man came back from it, he took at once 
his old place in the public regard. Even after all danger of a 
tyrant had ceased, ostracism was a convenient way for the 
people to relieve a leader whom they trusted from troublesome 
rivals or opponents. 



126 



HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 B.C. 



The "light-armed'' citizens were still not eligible to office. 
Otherwise, Athens had become a democracy. Like Solon, 
Clisthenes might easily have made himself tyrant. But, with 
splendid faith, he chose to work, ag Solon had done, to found 
government by the people. 



For Further Reading. 
(on Solon) . 



Bury, 149-155 (on tyran.ts)-and 180-189 



IV. MILITARY RULE AT SPARTA 

In the year 900, Sparta was merely one of many petty Dorian 
states in the Peloponnesus. It had no sea-coast ; it covered only 
a few square miles ; and it was surrounded by more powerful 

neighbors. In some 









L IL I 1) V 1 M<i\ lA 

MLSM N I V .S, ,,t 

] 1 \ L I M \ 



way (legend says, 
through the influ- 
ence of a reforming 
law-giver, Lycurgus) 
the Spartans adopt- 
ed peculiar institu- 
tions which soon 
made them a marked 
people. Disciplined 
and hardened, they 
then entered on a 
career of conquest. 
By 700 B.C. they 
were masters of all 
Laconia ; soon after, they subdued Messenia ; and then they 
brought all the rest of the Peloponnesus — except hostile Argos 
— into a military league of which they were the head (the Pelo- 
ponnesian League). 

Sparta had two kings. The Spartan story explained this 
arrangement as due to the birth of twin princes. At all events, 
in some way, the nobles had been able to divide the royal power, 
and so were not so anxious to abolish it. Real authority rested 



C States dependent O 
^ upon Sparta. 
";^ States in alliance 
l3 with Sparta. 




4k ° 



10 20 30 40 50 



THE PELOPONNESIAN LEAGUE 
(500 B.C.) 






SPARTAN DISCIPLINE 



127 



and their 
subjects 



in the Senate of thirty elders. An Assembly, much Uke that 
of Homeric times, accepted or rejected proposals laid before it 
by the Senate, but could not amend or discuss them. Practi- 
cally, Sparta was an oligarchy. 

Moreover, as a whole, the Spartans were a ruling class in the Spartans 
midst of subjects eight or ten times their number. They were 
a camp of some 9000 conquerors, with their families, living under 
arms in their unwalled city. They had taken for themselves 
the most fertile lands in Laconia ; but they did no ivork. Each 
Spartan's land was tilled for him by slaves, called Helots. 

These Helots were the descendants of the country-dwellers 
at the time of the Spartan conquest. They numbered perhaps 
five to one Spartan. They furnished light-armed troops in 
war ; but they were always a danger, and occasionally the 
Spartans carried out secret massacres of the more ambitious 
and intelligent among them. 

The inhabitants of the hundred small towns of Laconia were 
not slaves, but neither were they part of the Spartan state. 
They tilled lands of their own, and carried on whatever other 
industry was found in Laconia. They kept their own customs, 
and managed the local affairs of their own towns — under the 
supervision of Spartan rulers ; and they provided heavy-armed 
troops for Sparta's army. As a rule they seem to have been 
content with Sparta's mastery. 

That mastery rested, however, in the long run, on a sleep- 
less vigilance and on a rigid and brutal discipline. The aim of 
Sparta was to train soldiers. 

The family, as loell as the man, belonged absolutely to the 
state. Officers examined each child, at its birth, to decide 
whether it was fit to live. If it seemed weak or puny, it was 
exposed in the mountains to die. ' The father and mother 
could not save it. If it was strong and healthy, it was re- 
turned to its parents for a few years. But after a boy reached 
the age of seven, he never again slept under his mother's roof : 
he was taken from home, to be trained with other boys under 
public officers, until he was twenty. 



Spartan 
discipline 



128 HELLAS FROM 1000 TO 500 b.c. 

The boys were taught reading and a Httle martial music, 
but they were given no other mental culture. The main pur- 
pose of their education was to harden and strengthen the body 
and to develop self-control and obedience. On certain festival 
days, boys were whipped at the altars to test their endurance ; 
and Plutarch (a Greek writer of the second century a.d.) states 
that they often died under the lash rather than utter a cry. 
This custom was much like the savage "sun-dance" of some 
American Indian tribes. Several other features of Spartan 
life seem to have been survivals of a barbarous period that the 
Spartans never wholly outgrew. 

From twenty to thirty, the youth lived under arms in bar- 
racks. There he was one of a mess of fifteen. From his land 
he had to provide his part of the barley meal, cheese, and 
black broth, with meat on holidays, for the company's food. 
The mess drilled and fought side by side, so that in battle 
each man knew that his daily companions and friends stood 
about him. Their many years of constant military drill made 
it easy for the Spartans to adopt more complex tactics than 
were possible for their neighbors. They were trained in small 
regiments and companies, so as to maneuver readily at the 
word of command. This made them superior in the field. 
They stood to the other Greeks as disciplined soldiery always 
stands to untrained militia. 

At thirty the man was required to marry, in order to rear 
more soldiers ; but he must still eat in barracks, and live there 
most of the time. He had no real home. Said an Athenian, 
"The Spartan's life is so unendurable that it is no wonder he 
throws it away lightly in battle." 

There was a kind of virtue, no doubt, in this training. The 
Spartans had the quiet dignity of born rulers. In contrast with 
the noisy Greeks about them, their speech was brief and 
pithy ("laconic" speech). They used only iron money. And 
their plain living made them appear superior to the weak in- 
dulgences of other men. The changeless character of their 
government, without alteration for more than five hundred 



SPARTAN DISCIPLINE 129 

years, called forth admiration from the other Greeks, who 
were accustomed to kaleidoscopic revolutions. Spartan women, 
too, kept a freedom which unhappily was lost in other Greek 
cities. Girls were trained in gymnastics, much as boys were ; 
and the women were famous for beauty and health, and for 
public spirit and patriotism. 

Still, the value of the Spartans to the world lay in the fact 
that they made a garrison for the rest of Greece, and helped save 
something better than themselves. In themselves, they were 
hard, ignorant, narrow. They did nothing for art, literature, 
science, or philosophy. // the Greeks had all been Spartans, 
we could afford to omit the study of Greek history. 

For Further Reading. — AU students should read the charming 
account of Spartan customs contained in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus. 
Davis' Readings has several pages of extracts from it. 

Exercise. — Distinguish between Sparta and Laconia. How did 
the relation of Thebes to Boeotia differ from that of Sparta to Laconia? 
Which of these two relations was most like that of Athens to Attica f 
Have you any buildings in your city in which Greek columns are used ? 
Of which order, in each case? (Take several leading buildings in a 
large town.) Explain the following terms : constitution ; Helot ; 
tyrant ; Lycurgus ; Clisthenes ; Areopagus ; archon ; deme ; clan ; 
tribe ; a "tribe of Clisthenes." 

(To explain a term, in such aii exercise, is to make such statements 
concerning it as will at least prevent the term being confused with any 
other. Thus if the term is Solon, it will not do to say, " A Greek law- 
giver," or "A lawgiver of the sixth century b.c." The answer must 
at least say, "An Athenian lawgiver of about 600 b.c." ; and it ought 
to say, "An Athenian lawgiver and democratic reformer of about 600 
B.C." Either of the first two answers is worth zero.) 



CHAPTER X 

A LITTLE GEOGRAPHY AND REVIEW^ 

(Based on the Maps after pages 80, 90, and 108) 

Note the three great divisions : Northern Greece (Epirus and Thes- 
saly) ; Central Greece (a group of eleven districts, to the Isthmus of 
Corinth) ; and the Peloponnesus (the southern peninsula). Name the 
districts from Phocis south, and the chief cities in each, as shown on 
the map. Which districts have no coast ? Locate Delphi, Thermopylae, 
Tempe, Parnassus, Olympus, Olympia, Salamis, Ithaca, eight islands, 
three cities on the Asiatic side. Draw the map with the amount of 
detail just indicated. Keep in mind that the islands shown are only a few 
of the many score that dot the Aegean. Examine the map frequently in 
preparing the next lesson. {The index tells on what map each geographical 
name used in the book can be found, — except in a feiu cases, like Pacific 
Ocean.) 

" Hellas " The Greeks called themselves Hellenes (as they do still). 

^^ .. ,, Hellas meant not European Greece alone, but all the lands of 

Hellenes . ^ . "' 

the Hellenes. It included the Greek peninsula, the shores and 

islands of the Aegean, Greek colonies on the Black Sea, to the 
east, and in Sicily and southern Italy, to the west, with scat- 
tered patches elsewhere along the Mediterranean. Still, the 
European peninsula, or Greece, remained the heart of Hellas. 
Epirus and Thessaly had little to do with Greek history. Omit- 
ting them, the area of Greece is less than a fourth of that of 
New York. 
Many small The islands and the patches of Greek settlements on dis- 
tant coasts made many distinct geographical divisions. Even 
little Greece counted more than twenty such units, each shut 
off from the others by its strip of sea and its mountain walls. 
Some of these divisions were about as large as an American 
township, and the large ones (except Thessaly and Epirus)| 
were only seven or eight times that size. 

130 



divisions 



THE INFLUENCE OF GEOGRAPHY 



131 



The little states which grew up in these divisions differed 
widely from one another. Some became monarchies ; some, 
oligarchies ; some, democracies. In some, the chief industry 
became trade; in some, it was agriculture. In some, the 
people were slow and conservative ; in others, they were enter- 
prising and progressive. Oriental states were marked by great 
uniformity : the civilizations of European countries have been 
marked by a wholesome diversity, and this character was found 
especially among the Greeks. 

Mountain people, living apart, are usually rude and conserva- 
tive ; but from such tendencies Hellas was saved by the sea. The 
sea brought Athens as closely into touch with Miletus (in Asia) 
as with Sparta or Olympia. The very heart of Greece is broken 
into islands and promontories, so that it is hard to find a spot 
thirty miles distant from the sea. Sailors and traders come in 
touch constantly with new manners and new ideas, and they 
are more likely to make progress than a purely agricultural 
people. Exchanging commodities, they are ready to exchange 
ideas also. The seafaring Hellenes were " always seeking some 
new thing." 

These early seekers found "new things" within easy reach. 
This " most European of all European lands " lay nearest of all 
Europe to the old civilizations of Asia and Egypt. Moreover, 
it faced this civilized East rather than the barbarous West. 
On the other side, toward Italy, the coast of Greece is cliff or 
marsh, with only three or four good harbors. On the east, 
however, the whole line is broken by deep bays, from whose 
mouths chains of inviting islands lead on and on. In clear 
weather, the mariner may cross the Aegean without losing 
sight of land. 

Very important, too, was the appearance of the landscape. 
A great Oriental state spread over vast plains and was bounded 
by terrible immensities of desolate deserts. But, except in 
Thessaly, Greece contained no plains of consequence. It was 
a land of intermingled sea and mountain, with everything upon a 
moderate scale. There were no mountains so astounding as to 



A varied 
civilization 



Intercourse 
by the sea 



" Always 
seeking 
some new 
thing" 



Vicinity 
of older 
civilizations 
in the East 



132 



THE EARLY GREEKS 



awe the mind. There were no destructive earthquakes, or tre- 
mendous storms, or overwhelming floods. Oriental man had 
bowed in superstitious dread before the mysteries of nature, 
with little attempt to explain them. But in Greece, nature 
was not terrible; and men began early to search into her se- 
crets. Oriental submission to tradition and custom was replaced 
by fearless inquiry afid originality. In government. Oriental 




Scene in the Vale of Tempe. — From a photograph. 



despotism gave way to Greek freedom. Greece had no parallel 
to the slavish Babylonian or Persian submissiveness before their 
kings, or to the Egyptian's before his priests. 

No doubt, too, the moderation and variety of the world 
about them had a part in producing the many-sided genius of 
the people and their lively but well-controlled imagination. 
And the varied beauty of hill and dale and blue, sunlit sea, the 
wonderfully clear, exhilarating air, and the soft splendor of 
the radiant sky helped to give them deep joy in mere living 






THE INFLUENCE OF GEOGRAPHY 133 

Above all other peoples, they developed a love for harmony and 
'proportion. Moderation became their ideal virtue, and they 
used the same word for good and beautiful. 

Like most of Europe, Greece has a more temperate climate A temperate 
than the semi-tropical river valleys of Asia, and food crops *^^*°^*® 
demand more cultivation. This called for greater exertion upon 
the part of man. The beginnings of civilization were slower in 
Europe ; but man was finally to count for more there than in 
Asia. 

Finally, Greece was saved from Asiatic conquest largely by its Protected 
position behind the broad moat of the Mediterranean. Persia ^^s^tic 
subdued the Asiatic Greeks almost without a blow : against the conquest 
European Greeks, we shall see, her supreme efforts failed. Mediterra- 

To understand this value of the Mediterranean as a barrier, nean 
we must keep in mind the character of ships in early times. 
The sea was the chief highway for merchants, traveling in single 
vessels and certain of friendly welcome at almost any port. 
But oars were the main force that drove the ship (sails were 
used only when the wind was very favorable) ; and the small 
vessels of that day could not carry many more people than 
were needed to man the benches of oarsmen. To transport a 
large army, in this way, with needful supplies, — in condition, 
too, to meet a hostile army at the landing place, — was almost 
impossible. 

During the five centuries from 1000 to 500 B.C., the Hellenes Summary 
came to think of themselves as one people — though not as one 
nation — and they had developed a brilliant, jostling society. 
For more than half the period they had been busy sowing Hel- 
lenic cities broadcast along distant Mediterranean shores. 
They had found a capable leadership for war in Sparta. Every- 
where they had rid themselves of the old monarchic rule ; and, 
in Athens in particular, they had gone far toward a true democ- 
racy. Toward the close of the period, they had developed art, 
poetry, and philosophy. Their civilization had become nobler 
and more promising than any other the world had yet seen. 



for 1000- 
500 B.C. 



own. 



134 THE EARLY GREEKS ^ 

A civiliza- Moreover, this civilization was essentially one with our own. 

tion like otxr rpj^^ remains of Egyptian or Babylonian sculpture and archi- ; 
tecture arouse our admiration and interest as curiosities; but! 
they are foreign to us. With a Greek temple or a Greek poem] 
we feel at home. It might have been built, or written, by an< 
American. Some of our most beautiful buildings are copied 
from Greek models. Our historians venerate the Greek He-i 
rodotus and Thucydides as their masters. Our children delight ■ 
in the stories that the blind Homer chanted, and older students i 
still find his poems a necessary part of literary culture. ! 

Exercise. — Name five distinct features of Greek geography! 
favorable to civilization. Name two features favorable to an early 
civilization (as compared with the rest of Europe) . Can you justify I 
the phrase "Most European of European lands" for Greece, by point-: 
ing out two or more respects in which important European character- 
istics are emphasized in Greek geography? Make a table — in two I 
parallel columns — of leading dates, approximate or fixed, in Oriental ! 
and in Greek history, down to 500 B.C., when the two streams join. I 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PERSIAN WARS 

So far the story of the despotic Oriental world and of the free East and 

European world have been separate stories ; but about 500 B.C. West come 
... . into connict 

they join into one story. We have seen how the Persians had 

stretched their rule swiftly over the territory of all preceding 

empires, beside adding vast regions before unknown. By 500, 

they had advanced even into Europe across Thrace (map after 

p. 66). This brought their western frontier into touch with 

the scattered groups of Greek cities, bustling and energetic but 

small and disunited. The mighty world-empire now advanced 

confidently to add these little communities to its dominions. 

East and West joined battle. 

The first struggle was on Asiatic ground. For two centuries Persia and 
(750-550 B.C.) the Asiatic Hellenes had excelled all other Q^^gfij^s^*''^ 
branches of the Greek race. Unfortunately for them, the 
Empire of Lydia arose near them. Croesus, king of that great 
state, wished access to the Aegean Sea, and subdued all the 
Greek cities on the Asia Minor coast. Croesus, however, admired 
the Greeks and favored them in many ways, leaving them almost 
independent. 

When Cyrus, the Persian, attacked Croesus (p. 67), these 
Greek cities fought gallantly for Lydia — in spite of tempting 
offers from Persia. After Croesus' overthrow, Cyrus turned 
upon them for stern punishment. Thales (p. 112) urged a fed- 
eration of all Ionia, with one government and one army, to 
resist this attack. But the Greeks could not rise to so wise a 
plan (p. 96). So the Asiatic cities fell to Persia, one by one (540 
B.C.), and Ionia's leadership in civilization was gone forever. 

But in the year 500 these cities of Asia Minor broke into the P® !f°^^*° 
„ . . , Revolt, 500 

lamous Ionian Revolt against Persia. They made a fruitless B.C. 

m 



k 



136 



WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 



appeal for aid to Sparta (Davis' Readings, I, No. 57) ; but 
Athens sent them twenty ships and Httle Eretria sent five. 
At first the lonians and these aUies won swift success. They 
even took Sardis, the old capital of Lydia, far in the interior. 
But they were divided by mutual suspicions; the Persians 
used gold skillfully to stir up treachery ; and at the first defeat, 
the loose Ionian league broke up. Then Persia quickly subdued 
the cities again one by one. 

Herodotus says that Darius, the great Persian king, was so 
angered by the sack of Sardis that during the rest of his life he 
had a herald cry out to him thrice each day at dinner, — " O 
king, remember the Athenians I" But Persia would soon have 
attacked European Greece anyway. Her expanding frontier 
had reached Thessaly just before 500 B.C., and the same motives 
that had carried Persian arms through Thrace and Macedonia 
would have carried them on into Greece. The Greek cities were 
becoming wealthy, and Persia coveted their ships and their 
trade. The Ionian war delayed the Persian onset upon Europe 
for seven or eight years, until the Greeks were better prepared. 
The Athenians had been wise, as well as generous, in aiding 
the lonians. Their expedition to Asia was really defensive 
warfare. 

Even in Europe the conditions were discouraging enough. 
After the fall of Ionia there remained two great divisions of 
Hellas, — (1) the Eurojjean peninsula, which we usually call 
"Greece," and (2) Magna Graecia and Sicily. Elsewhere the 
scattered Greek cities, like those along the shores of the Black 
Sea, were too small or too busy defending themselves against 
surrounding savages to count for much in the coming struggle.- 
And now the two main divisions were attacked at the same time, 
— Greece by Persia, Sicily by Carthage. 

Carthage was a Phoenician colony on the north coast of 
Africa. It had built up an extensive empire in the western 
Mediterranean, and had often been in conflict with the Greek 
cities in Sicily. That island was an important position from 
which to control Mediterranean trade. Instigated by Persia 






FIRST ATTACK ON EUROPEAN GREECE 



137 



Carthage now made a determined effort to drive out her rivals. 
The Greek cities there were still ruled by tyrants. These rulers 
united under Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, and repelled the Car- 
thaginian onset. But the struggle kept these western Greeks 
from helping their kinsmen in the Greek peninsula against 
Persia. 

Within that peninsula, the forces that could be mustered 
against the master of the world were small, at best; and, as 
at almost all times, they were being wasted in internal struggles. 
Athens was at war with Aegina and with Thebes ; Sparta 
had renewed an ancient strife with Argos ; Phocis was en- 
gaged in war with Thessalians on one side and Boeotians on 
the other. Many cities, too, were torn by cruel class strife at 
home, oligarchs against democrats. To almost all Greeks, 
Sparta's Peloponnesian League (p. 126) seemed the one hope. 

Immediately after the end of the Ionian revolt, Darius began 
vast preparations to invade Greece. A mighty army was 
gathered at the Hellespont under Mardonius, son-in-law of 
the king ; and a large fleet was collected, to sail along the coast, 
in touch with the army, and to furnish it, day by day, with 
supplies. In 492, this double expedition set out, advancing 
along the shores of the Aegean ; but, as the fleet was rounding 
the rocky promontory of Mount Athos, a terrible storm dashed 
it to pieces. Mardonius had no choice but to retreat into Asia. 

In the spring of 490, the Persians were ready for a second 
expedition. This time, taking warning from the disaster at 
Mount Athos, the troops were embarked on a mighty fleet, 
which proceeded directly across the Aegean. Stopping only 
to receive the submission of islands by the way, the fleet reached 
Euboea without a check. 

There Eretria was captured, through the treachery of some 
of its oligarchs. The city was destroyed, and most of the 
people were sent in chains to Persia. Then the Persians landed 
on the plain of Marathon in Attica, to punish Athens. 
Hippias, the exiled tyrant (p. 123), was with the invaders, 
hoping to get back his throne as a servant of Persia; and he 



First 
Persian 
expedition : 
Mt. Athos 



Second 
expedition : 
Marathon 



138 WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 



A ill 1 



had pointed out this admirable place for disembarking the 
Persian cavalry. 

At first most of the Athenians wished to fight only behind 
their walls. Sooner or later, this must have resulted in ruin, 
especially as there were some traitors within the city hoping 
to admit Hippias. Happily Miltiades, one of the ten Generals 
(p. 125), persuaded the commanders to march out and attack 
the Persians at once.^ 

From the rising ground where the hills of Mount Pentelicus 
meet the plain, the ten thousand Athenian hoplites faced the 

Persian host for the first 
struggle between Greeks 
and Asiatics on Euro- 
pean ground. Sparta had 
promised aid ; and, at the 
first news of the Persian 
approach, a swift runner, 
Phidippides, had raced the 
hundred and fifty miles of 
rugged hill country to im- 
plore Sparta to hasten. 
He reached Sparta on the 
second day ; but the Spartans waited a week, on the ground 
that an old law forbade them to set out on a military expedi- 
tion before the full moon. The Athenians felt bitterly that 
Sparta was ready to look on, not unwillingly, while the " second 
city in Greece" was destroyed. 

'At all events, Athens was left to save herself (and our West- 
ern world) as best she could, with help from only one city. 
This was heroic little Plataea, in Boeotia, near by. Athens 
had sometimes protected the democratic government of that 
city from attack by the powerful oligarchs of Thebes. The 
Plataeans remembered this gratefully, and, on the eve of the 
battle, marched into the Athenian camp with their full force 

1 This story should be read in Herodotus, or, even better in some ways, 
in the extracts in Davis' Readings, with Dr. Davis' admirable introductions. 




Plan of Marathon. — Cf. map on p. 147. 






THE SECOND ATTACK — MARATHON 



139 



of a thousand hoplites. Then Athenians and Plataeans won 
a marvelous victory over several times their number ^ of the 
most famous soldiery in the world. 

Miltiades drew out his front as thin as he dared, to prevent Generalship 
the long Persian front from overlapping and "flanking" him. ?{ 
To accomplish this, he weakened his center daringly, so as to 




Marathon To-day. — From a photograph. The camera stood a little 
above the Athenian camp in the Plan on the opposite page. That camp 
was in the first open space in the foreground, where the poplar trees are 
scattered. The land beyond the strip of water is the narrow peninsula 
running out from the "Marsh" in the Plan. 



mass all the men he could spare from there in the wings. These 
wings he ordered to advance more rapidly than the thin center. 
Then he moved his forces down the slope toward the Persian 
lines. While yet an arrow's flight distant, the advancing Greeks 

1 All numbers given for the Persian army, in this or other campaigns, are 
guesses. Ancient historians put the Persians at Marathon at from a quarter 
to half a million. ' Modern scholars are sure that no ancient fleet could 
possibly carry any considerable part of such a force, and estimate the Persian 
numbers all the way from 100,000 down to 20,000. 



140 WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 

broke into a run, so as to cover the rest of the ground before 
the Persian archers could get in their deadly work. Once at 
close quarters, the heavy weapons of the Greeks gave them over- 
whelming advantage. Their dense array, charging with long, 
outstretched spears, by its sheer weight broke the light-armed 
Persian lines. The Persians fought gallantly, as always ; but 
their darts and light scimitars made little impression upon the 
heavy bronze armor of the Greeks, while their linen tunics and 
wicker shields offered little defense against the thrust of the 
Greek spear. For a time, Persian numbers and gallantry did 
force back the Greek center ; but the two Greek wings, having 
routed the forces in front of them, wheeled upon the Persian 
center, crushing both flanks at the same moment, and drove 
it in disorder to the ships. One hundred ninety-two Athenians 
fell.^ The Persians left over sixty-four hundred dead upon the 
field. 

In the enthusiasm of victory the Athenians charged even 
into the sea, laying hold of the Persian ships with their hands ; 
but here they were repulsed. The Persians sailed away on 
a course that might lead to Athens. Moreover, the Greek 
army had just seen sun-signals flashing to the enemy from some 
traitor's shield in the distant mountains ; and Miltiades feared 
that this might be an invitation to attack the city in the absence 
of the army. To check such plots, he sent Phidippides to 
announce the victory to Athens. Already exhausted by the 
battle, Phidippides put forth supreme effort, raced the twenty- 
two miles of mountain road, shouted exultantly to the eager, 
anxious crowds in the city street, — "Ours the victory!" — 
and fell dead.^ This famous run from the battlefield to the 
city is the basis of the modern " Marathon" race, in which cham- 
pion athletes of all countries compete. 

* Recent excavations have shown that this number of bodies were buriec 
under the mound erected to the Athenian slain, — so confirming the old 
story of Herodotus. 

2 The student will like to read, or to hear read. Browning's poem, Phidip-\ 
jndes, with the story of both runs by this Greek hero. Compare this storyj 
with Herodotus' account in Davis' Readings, I, No. 59. 



THE SECOND ATTACK — MARATHON 



141 



Meanwhile Miltiades was hurrying his wearied army, without The mean- 
rest, over the same road. Fortunately, the Persian fleet had ]Ji^athon 
to sail around a long promontory (map, page 147), and when 
it appeared off Athens, the next morning, Miltiades and his 
hoplites had arrived. The Persians did not care to face again 
the men of Marathon ; and the same day they set sail for Asia, 

Merely as a military event Marathon is an unimportant skir- 
mish; but, in its results upon human welfare, it is among the 
few really "decisive" battles of the world. Whether Egyptian 
conquered Babylonian, or Babylonian conquered Egyptian, 
mattered little in the long run. But it did matter whether 
or not the huge, despotic East should crush the new free life 
out of the West. Marathon decided that the West should 
live. 

For the Athenians themselves, Marathon began a new era. 
Natural as the victory came to seem in later times, it took high 
courage on that day to stand before the hitherto unconquered energy 
Persians, even without such tremendous odds. "The Athe- 
nians," says Herodotus, "were the first of the Greeks to face 
the Median garments, . . . whereas up to this time the very 
name of Mede [Persian] had been a terror to the Hellenes." 
The sons of the men who conquered on that field could find no 
odds too crushing, no prize too dazzling, in the years to come. 



New 
outburst 
of Athenian 



years 
interval 



Soon after Marathon, Egypt rebelled against Persia. This The ten 
gave the Greeks ten years to get ready for the next Persian 
attack, but the only city to make any good use of the time 
was Athens. The democracy there had divided into two 
political parties. The conservative party was content with 
the reforms of Clisthenes, and wished to follow established 
customs without further change. Its leader at this time was 
Aristides, surnamed "the Just." The radical party wished 
further reforms and favored many changes. It was led by 
Themistocles. Themistocles was less upright than Aris tides ; 
but he was one of the most far-sighted and resourceful statesmen 
in all history. 



Preparation 
at Athens 



142 WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 

Themistocles passionately wished one change in Athenian 
practice in war. He saw that Persia could not attack Greece 
successfully without command of the sea, to transport men 
and supplies. Moreover, huge as the Persian Empire was, it 
was mainly an inland power : it could not so vastly outnumber 
the Greeks in ships as in men.- Victory for the Greeks, then, 
was more likely on sea than on land. Accordingly he determined 
to make Athens a naval power. 

But this proposal ran counter to all old custom. Sea-farers 
though the Greeks were, up to this time they had not vised ships 
much in war. Attica, in particular, had almost no war navy. 
The party of Aristides wished to hold to the old policy of fight- 
ing on land, and they had the glorious victory of Marathon to 
back their arguments. Feeling ran high. Finally, in 483, the 
leaders agreed to let a vote of ostracism decide. 

While the voting was going on (according to Herodotus), 
a stupid fellow, who did not know Aristides, asked him to 
write the name Aristides on the shell he was about to vote. 
Aristides did so, asking, however, what harm Aristides had 
ever done the man. "No harm," replied the voter. "In- 
deed, I do not know him; but I am tired of hearing him 
called 'the Just.'" 1 

The vote sent Aristides into banishment, and left Themis- 
tocles free to carry out his new policy. Rich veins of silver 
had recently been discovered in the mines of Attica. These 
mines belonged to the city. It had been proposed to divide the 
income from them among the citizens ; but Themistocles per- 
suaded his countrymen to reject this tempting plan, and instead 
to build a great fleet. In the next three years Athens became 
the greatest naval power in Hellas. 

During the ten-year interval, too, the great Darius died, 
and the invasion of Greece fell to his feebler son, Xerxes. Mara- 
thon had proved that no Persian fleet by itself could transport 

1 Read the other anecdotes about Aristides in Davis' Readings, I, No. 61. 



THE EXPEDITION OF DARIUS 



143 



enough troops ; so the plan of Mardonius' expedition (p. 137) 
was tried again, but upon a larger scale, hoih as to army and fleet. 

To guard against another accident at Mt. x\thos, a canal for Gloom in 
ships was cut through the isthmus at the back of that rocky '^^^^^^ 
headland, — a great engineering work that took three years. 
Supplies, too, were collected at stations along the way; the 
Hellespont was bridged with chains of boats covered with 
planks ; ^ and at last, in the spring of 480, Xerxes led a mighty 
host of many nations into Europe. A fleet of twelve hundred 
ships accompanied the army. 

The danger forced the Greeks into something like common 
action. Sparta and Athens joined in, calling an Hellenic congress 
at Corinth, in 481 B.C. The deputies that appeared bound 
their cities by oath to aid one another, and to join in punishing 
any states that should help Persia. Ancient feuds were pacified ; 
plans of campaign were discussed ; and Sparta was formally 
appointed leader. Still the outlook was full of gloom. Argos, 
out of hatred for Sparta, and Thebes, from jealousy of Athens, 
had refused to attend the congress. These were two of the 
leading cities in Greece ; and every one knew that they were 
ready to join Xerxes. No wonder that the Delphic oracle 
warned the Athenians to flee to the ends of the earth. 

The Greeks had three lines of defense. The first was at the Vale 
of Tempe near Mount Olympus, where only a narrow pass 
opened into Thessaly. The second was at Thermopylae, where defense 
the mountains shut off northern from central Greece, except 
for a road only a few feet in width. The third was behind the 
Isthmus of Corinth. 

At the congress at Corinth the Peloponnesians had wished 
selfishly to abandon the first two lines. They urged that all 
patriotic Greeks should retire at once within the Peloponnesus, 
and fortify the Isthmus by an impregnable wall. This plan 
was as foolish as it was selfish. Greek troops might have held 
the Isthmus against the Persian land army ; but the Pelopon- 



The three 
possible 
lines of 



1 Read Herodotus' story of Xerxes' wrath when the first bridge broke, and 
how he ordered the Hellespont to be flogged (Davis' Readings, I, No. 64). 



144 



WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 



nesus was readily open to attack by sea, and the Persian fleet 
would have found it easier here than at either of the other lines 
of defense to land troops in the Greek rear, without long losing 
touch with its own army. Such a surrender of two thirds of 
Greece, too, would have meant a tremendous reinforcement of 
the enemy by excellent Greek soldiery. Accordingly, it was 



















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Thermopylae. — The photograph shows the steepness of the mountain ; 
but the sea has now receded from its foot. 

finally decided to resist the entrance of the Persians into Greece 
by meeting them at the Vale of Tempe. 

Sparta, however, had no gift for going to meet an attack. A 
hundred thousand men should have held the Vale of Tempe; 
but only a feeble garrison was sent there, and it retreated before 
the Persians appeared. Xerxes entered Greece without a blow. 
Then the Thessalian cities, deserted by their allies, joined the 
invaders with their powerful cavalry. 

This made it evident, even to Spartan statesmen, that to 
abandon central Greece would strengthen Xerxes further ; and 



THERMOPYLAE AND SALAMIS 145 

it was decided in a half-hearted way to make a stand at Ther- Thermopy- 
mopylae. The pass was only some twenty feet wide between ^ i, °^®. 
the cliff and the sea, and the only other path was one over the Greece 
mountain, equally easy to defend. Moreover, the long island 
of Euboea approached the mainland just opposite the pass, so 
that the Greek fleet in the narrow strait could guard the land 
army against having troops landed in the rear. 

The Greek fleet at this place numbered 270 ships. Of these 
the Athenians furnished half. Sparta sent only 16 ships, but 
her admiral was in supreme command of the whole fleet. The 
land defense had been left to the Peloponnesian league ; but 
the force which Sparta had sent to attend to it was shamefully 
small. The Spartan king, Leonidas, held the pass with three 
hundred Spartans and a few thousand allies. The main force 
of Spartans was again left at home, on the ground of a religious 
festival. 

The Persians reached Thermopylae without a check. Battle 
was joined at once on land and sea, and raged for three days. 
Four hundred Persian ships were wrecked in a storm, and the 
rest were checked by the Greek fleet in a sternly contested con- 
flict at Artemisium. On land, Xerxes flung column after col- 
umn of chosen troops into the pass, to be beaten back each time 
in rout. But on the third night a Greek traitor guided a force 
of Persians over the mountain path, which the Spartans had 
left only slightly guarded. Leonidas knew that he could no 
longer hold his position. He sent home his allies ; but he and 
his three hundred Spartans remained to die in the pass which 
their country had given them to defend. They charged joyously 
upon the Persian spears, and fell fighting, to a man. 

Sparta had shown no capacity to command in this great crisis. 
Twice her shortsightedness had caused the loss of vital positions. 
But at Thermopylae her citizens set an example of calm heroism 
that has stirred the world ever since. In later times the burial 
place of the Three Hundred was marked by this inscription, 
" Stranger, go tell at Sparta that we lie here in obedience to her 
command." 



146 WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 

Athens Xerxes advanced on Athens and was joined by most of central 

destroyed Greece. The Theban oligarchs, in particular, welcomed him 
with joy. The Peloponnesians would risk no further battle 
outside their own peninsula. They withdrew the army, and 
fell back upon their first plan of building a wall across the 
Isthmus. 

The news threw Athens into uproar and despair. The Delphic 
oracle was again appealed to, but it prophesied utter destruction. 
Themistocles finally secured from the priestess an additional 
prophecy, that when all else was destroyed, "wooden walls" 
would still defend the Athenians. Many citizens then wished 
to retire within the wooden palisade of the Acropolis ; but 
Themistocles persuaded them that the oracle meant the " wooden 
walls" of their ships. 

The Greek fleet had withdrawn from Artemisium, after the 
Persians won the land pass ; and the Spartan admiral was 
bent upon retiring at once to the new position of the Pelopon- 
nesian army, at the Isthmus. By vehement entreaties, Themis- 
tocles persuaded him to hold the whole fleet for a day or two at 
Athens, so as to remove the women and children and old men 
to Salamis and other near-by islands. There was no time to 
save property. The Persians marched triumphantly through 
Attica, burning villages and farmsteads, and laid Athens and 
its temples in ashes. 
Strategy of But Themistocles, in delaying the retreat of the fleet, planned 
Themisto- fQj. more than escape. He was determined that the decisive 
battle should be a sea battle, and that it should be fought where 
the fleet then lay. No other spot so favorable could be found. 
The narrow strait between the Athenian shore and Salamis 
would embarrass the Persian numbers, and help to make up for 
the small numbers of the Greek ships. Themistocles saw, too, 
that if the Greeks withdrew to Corinth, all chance of united 
action would be lost. The fleet would break up. Some ships 
would sail home to defend their own island cities ; and others, 
like those of ISIegara and Aegina, feeling that their cities were 
deserted, might join the Persians. 



THERMOPYLAE AND SALAMIS 



147 



The fleet had grown now to 378 ships. The Athenians fur- 
nished 200 of these. With generous patriotism, they had 
yielded the chief command to Sparta, but it was Themistocles 
who, by persuasion, entreaties, and bribes, had kept the navy 
from abandoning the land forces at Thermopylae, before the 
sea fight off Artemisium. There now fell to him a like task, 




G, the Greek fleet at Salamis. PPP, the Persian fleet. X, the Throne 
of Xerxes. (The "Long Walls" were not built until later; p. 160.) 

but a mightier one. Debate waxed fierce in the all-night 
council of the captains. The Corinthian admiral sneered that 
the allies need not regard a man who no longer represented a 
Greek city. Themistocles retorted that he represented two 
hundred ships, and could make a city, or take one, where he 
chose; and, by a threat to sail away to found a new Athens 
in Italy, he forced the allies to remain. 



148 WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 

Even then the decision would have been reconsidered, had 
not the wily Themistocles made use of a strange stratagem. 
With pretended friendship, he sent a secret message to Xerxes, 
telling him of the weakness and dissensions of the Greeks, and 
advising him to block up the straits to prevent their escape. Xerxes 
took this treacherous advice. Aristides, whose ostracism had 
been revoked in the hour of danger, and who now slipped 
through the hostile fleet in his single ship to join his country- 
men, brought the news that they were surrounded. 

There was now no choice but to fight. The Persian fleet was 
twice the size of the Greek, and was itself largely made up 
of Asiatic Greeks, while the Phoenicians and Egyptians, who 
composed the remainder, were famous sailors. The battle 
of Salamis, the next day, lasted from dawn to night, but 
the Greek victory was complete. 

' ■ A king sat on the rocky brow ^ 
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 
And ships by thousands lay below, 
And men in nations, — all were his. 
He counted them at break of day, 
And when the sun set, where were they?" 

Aeschylus, an Athenian poet who was present in the battle, 
gives a noble picture of it in his drama. The Persians. The 
speaker is a Persian, telling the story to the Persian queen- 
mother : 

"Not inflight 
The Hellenes then their solemn paeans sang, 
But with brave spirits hastening on to battle. 
With martial sound the trumpet fired those ranks : 
And straight with sweep of oars that flew thro' foam, 
They smote the loud waves at the boatswain's call . . . 
And all at once we heard a mighty shout — 
* sons of Hellenes, forward, free your country. 
. . . The fight 
Is for our all.' . . 

1 A golden throne had been set up for Xerxes, that he might better view 
the battle (see map, p. 147). These lines are from Byron. 



PLATAEA 



149 



And all the shores and rocks were full of corpses, 

And every ship was wildly rowed in flight, 

All that composed the Persian armament. 

And they [Greeks], as men spear tunnies, or a haul 

Of other fishes, with the shafts of oars 

Or spars of wrecks, went smiting, cleaving down ; 

And bitter groans and wailings overspread 

The wide sea waves, tUl eye of swarthy night 

Bade it all cease. ... Be assured 

That never yet so great a multitude 

Died in a single day as died in this." 




Bay of Salamis To-day ; from a photograph. 



On the day of Salamis the Sicihan Greeks won a decisive vic- 
tory over the Carthaginians at Himera. That battle closed 
the struggle in the West. In Greece the Persian chances were 
still good. Xerxes, it is true, fled at once to Asia with his 
shattered fleet; but he left three hundred thousand chosen 
troops under Mardonius. Mardonius withdrew from central 
Greece for the time, to winter in the plains of Thessaly ; but 
he would be ready to renew the struggle in the spring. 

The Athenians began courageously to rebuild their city. 
Mardonius looked upon them as the soul of the Greek resist- 
ance, and in the early spring, he offered them an alliance, with 



Mardonius 
and Athens 



150 



WARS OF THE GREEKS AND PERSIANS 



many favors and with the complete restoration of- their city at 
Persian expense. Terrified lest the Athenians should accept 
so tempting an offer, Sparta sent profuse promises of help, 
begging them not to desert Hellas. There was no need of such 
anxiety. The Athenians had already sent back the Persian 
messenger : " Tell Mardonius that so long as the sun holds on 
his way in heaven, the Athenians will come to no terms with 
Xerxes." Of Sparta they asked only that she take the field 
early enough so that Athens need not be again abandoned with- 
out a battle. 

Sparta made the promise, but did not keep it. Mardonius 
approached rapidly. The Spartans found another sacred fes- 
tival before which it would not do to leave their homes ; and 
the Athenians, in bitter disappointment, a second time took 
refuge at Salamis. Mardonius burned Athens a second time, 
laid waste the farms over Attica, cut down the olive groves (the 
slow growth of many years), and then retired to the level plains 
of Boeotia. 

Athenian envoys had been at Sparta for weeks pleading for 
instant action, but they had been put off with meaningless de- 
lays. The fact was, in spite of her deceitful promises, Sparta 
still clung to the stupid plan of defending only the Isthmus. 
Some of her keener allies, however, at last made the Spartan 
government see the uselessness of the wall at Corinth if the 
Athenians should be forced to join Persia with their fleet, as, in 
that case, the Persians could land an army anywhere they 
chose in the rear of the wall. 

Sparta decided to act, and she gave a striking proof of her 
power. The Athenian envoys had given up hope, and one 
morning they announced indignantly that they would at once 
return home. To their amazement, they were told that during 
the night 50,000 Peloponnesian troops, under the Spartan king 
Pausanias, had set out for central Greece. 

The Athenian forces and other reinforcements raised the total 
of the Greek army to about 100,000, and the final contest with 
Mardonius was fought near the little town of Plataea. Spartan 



PLATAEA 



151 



generalship again blundered sadly; but the stubborn Spartan 
valor and the Athenian skill and dash won a victory which be- 
came a massacre. Only 3000 Persians escaped to Asia. The 
Greeks lost 154 men. 

Plataea closed the first great period of the Persian Wars. No 
hostile Persian ever again set foot in European Greece. To the 
Greeks themselves their victory opened a new epoch. They 
were victors over the greatest of world-empires. New energies 
stirred in their veins. The matchless bloom of Greek art and 
thought, in the next two generations, had its roots in the soil of 
Marathon and Plataea. 



The mean- 
ing of the 
Greek 
victory 



Exercises. — 1. Summarizethecausesof the Persian Wars. 2. De- 
vise and memorize a series of catch-words for rapid statement that shall 
suggest the outHne of the story quickly. Thus : 

Persian conquest of Lydia and so of Asiatic Greeks; revolt of Ionia, 
500 B.C.; Athenian aid; reconquest of Ionia. First expedition against 
European Greece, 492 B.C., through Thrace : Mount Athos. Second ex- 
pedition, across the Aegean, two years later : capture of Eretria ; land- 
ing at Marathon ; excuses of Sparta ; arrival of Plataeans ; Miltiades 
and battle of Marathon, 490 B.C. (Let the student continue the series. 
In this way, the whole story may he reviewed in two minutes, with a 
reference to every important event.) 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings 
(I, Nos. 62-73) gives the whole story of Xerxes' invasion as the Greeks 
themselves told it, in about 47 pages. Nowhere else can it be read so 
well; and the high school student who does read that account can 
afford to omit modern authorities. 

Additional : Cox's Greeks and Persians is an admirable little book : 
chs. v-viii may be read for this story. Many anecdotes are given in 
Plutarch's Lives (" Themistocles " and " Aristides") ; some of these 
should be told in class. 



CHAPTER XII 

ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP, 478-431 B.C. 

(From the Persian War to the Peloponnesian War) 
The history of Athens is for us the history of Greece. — Holm. 

While the Greeks were still camped at Plataea, they agreed 
to hold there each year a Congress of all Greek cities. This 
League of Plataea was a wise attempt to turn the makeshift 
union of the patriotic Greek states into a complete and lasting 
union. Athens proposed the plan, with the generous under- 
standing that Sparta should hold the headship. The noble 
project failed, and gave way to an Athenian league, because of 
Sparta's incompetence and pettiness — as we shall now see. 

After Plataea, the Athenians began once more to rebuild their 
temples and homes. Themistocles, however, persuaded them 
to leave even these in ashes and first surround the city with 
walls. Corinth, hoping basely to gain Athens' old commercial 
prosperity for herself, urged Sparta to interfere ; and, to her 
shame, Sparta did demand that the Athenians give up the 
plan : such walls, she said, might prove an advantage to the 
Persians if they should again occupy Athens. 

Attica, which had been ravaged so recently by the Persians, 
was in no condition to resist a Peloponnesian army. So the 
wily Themistocles gained precious time by having himself 
sent to Sparta to discuss the subject. There he put off the 
settlement of the matter from day to day, with skillful excuses ; 
and meanwhile the Athenians, neglecting all private matters, 
toiled at the walls with desperate haste — men, women, children, 
and slaves. No material was too precious. Inscribed tablets 

152 



ATHENS AND THE PIRAEUS 153 

and fragments of sacred temples and eA'^en monuments from the 
burial grounds were seized for the work. Then, when messengers 
informed Themistocles that the walls were high enough to be 
defended, he came before the Lacedaemonians ^ and told them 
bluntly that henceforward " they must deal with the Athenians 
as with men who knew quite well what was best for their own 
and the common good." 

After so providing security for Athens, Themistocles went on 
to establish her naval and commercial supremacy by two great 
measures. 

1. He secured a vote from the Assembly ordering that 
twenty new ships should be added each year to the war fleet. 

2. He provided the city with a port secure against either 
storm or human attack. 

Athens lay some miles from the shore. Until a few years Piraeus 
before, her only port had been an open and unsafe roadstead, ^°^^^^^^ 
— the Phalerum ; but during his archonship in 493, Themistocles 
had given the city a magnificent harbor, by improving the 
inclosed bay of the Piraeus, at great expense. Now he per- 
suaded the people to fortify this port on the land side with a 
massive wall of solid masonry, clamped with iron, sixteen feet 
broad and thirty feet high, so that old men and boys might easily 
defend it against any enemy. The Athenians now had two walled 
cities, each four or five miles in circuit, and only four miles 
apart; and the alien merchants, who dwelt at the Athenian 
ports, and who had fled at the Persian invasion, — many of 
them to Corinth, — came thronging back. 

The war with Persia was still going on, but only on the Victory at 
Ionian coast. In the early spring of 479, a fleet had crossed the Mycale 
Aegean to assist Samos in revolt against Persia. A Spartan 
commanded the expedition, but three fifths of the ships were 
Athenian. On the very day of Plataea these forces defeated a 
great Persian army at Mycale, on the coast of Asia Minor, and 

1 Lacedaemonia is the name given to the whole Spartan territory. See 
map, p. 126. Read in Thucydides (p. 174) the story of how Themistocles 
provided for his own safety at Sparta. 



154 THE GREEKS — ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 

seized and burned the three hundred Persian ships. No 
Persian fleet shoioed itself again in the Aegean for nearly a hun- 
dred years. Persian garrisons remained in many of the islands, 
for a time ; but Persia made no attempt to reinforce them. 

This victory of Mycale was a signal for the cities of Ionia to 
revolt again against Persia. The Spartans, however, shrank 
from the task of defending Hellenes so far away, and -proposed 
instead to remove the lonians to European Greece. The lonians 



i^-Port of Piraeus 




S A B O N I C GULF 



aaa —Walls of Themistocles. 
666 -Old City Limits. 
A — Acropolis. 
B —Areopagus. 
C -Pnyx. 
D —Museum. 
E —Agora. 



Athens and Its Ports. ^ 

refused to leave their homes, and the Athenians in the fleet 
declared that Sparta should not so destroy "Athenian colonies." 
The Spartans seized the excuse to sail home, leaving the Athenians 
to protect the lonians as best they could. The Athenians gal- 
lantly undertook the task, and began at once to expel the Per- 
sian garrisons from the islands of the Aegean. 

The next spring (478) Sparta thought better of the matter, 
and sent her king Pausanias (p. 150) to take command of the 
allied fleet. Pausanias had always had his full share of Spartan 



1 The "Long Walls" were built later (p. 160). 



THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS 155 

arrogance, and the victory at Plataea had turned his head 
completely. The lonians soon found his insolence unbearable, 
and asked the Athenians to take the leadership. Just then, 
too, it was discovered that Pausanias had been offering to 
betray Hellas to Persia. Sparta recalled him, to stand trial, 
and sent another general to the fleet. The allies, however, 
refused to receive another Spartan commander. Then Sparta 
and the Peloponnesian league withdrew from the war, and leader- 
ship fell to Athens. 

The allies now organized a new confederacy. Aristidcs, the Confederacy 
commander of the Athenian ships, proposed a plan of union, °* Delos 
appointing the number of ships and the amount of money 
that each of the allies should furnish each year for the war. 
The courtesy and tact of the Athenian, and his known honesty, 
made all the states content with his arrangements. ^ 

This union was called the Confederacy of Delos, because its 
seat of government and its treasury were to be at the island of 
Delos (the center of an ancient Ionian amphictyony). Here 
an annual congress of deputies from the different cities of the 
League was to meet. Each city had one vote — like the Amer- 
ican States under the old Articles of Confederation. Athens 
was the "president" of the League, and her generals com- 
manded the fleet. In return, she furnished nearly half of all the 
ships and men, — far more than her proper share. 

The purpose of the League was to free the Aegean completely 
from the Persians, and to keep them from ever coming back. 
The allies meant to make the union perpetual. Lumps of iron 
were thrown into the sea when the oath of union was taken, as 
a symbol that the oath should be binding until the iron should 
float. The League was composed mainly of Ionian cities, interested 
in commerce. It was a natural rival of Sparta's Dorian inland 
league. The short-lived League of Plataea had dissolved into 
these two hostile leagues. 

The League of Delos did its work well. Its chief military 

1 Exercise. — 1. Could Themistocles have served Athens at this time 
as well as Aristides did? 2. Report upon the later life of Themistocles. 



156 THE GREEKS — ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 

hero was the Athenian Cimon, son of Miltiades. Year after 
year, under his command, the aUied fleet reduced one Persian 
garrison after another, until the whole region of the Aegean — 
all its coasts and islands — was free. Naturally, the League 
grew in size. It came to include nearly all the islands of the 
Aegean and the cities of the northern and eastern coasts. The 
cities on the shores of the Black Sea, too, were added ; and, 
even more than before, the rich trade of that region streamed 
through the Hellespont to the Piraeus. 

All the cities of the Aegean regions enjoyed the benefits of the 
League ; but some of its members soon began to shirk. As 




Part of a Trireme, an Athenian warship, — from an Athenian relief. Only 
the highest "bank" of rowers is visible, but the oars of the two other 
banks are shown. See p. 161. 



soon as the pressing danger was over, many cities chose to pay 
more money, instead of furnishing ships and men. Athens, on 
the other hand, eagerly accepted both burdens and responsibili- 
ties. The fleet became almost wholly Athenian. Then it 
was no longer necessary for Athens to consult the allies as to 
the management of the war, and the congress at Delos became 
of little consequence. 

Then, here and there, cities began to refuse even the payment 
of money. This, of course, was secession. Such cities said 
that Persia was no longer dangerous, and that the need of the 
League was over. But the Athenian fleet, patroling the Aegean, 
was all that kept the Persians from reappearing ; and Athens, 



THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 



157 



with good reason, held the alhes by force to their promises. 
In 467, when the union was only ten years old, Naxos, one 
of the most powerful islands, refused to pay its contributions. 
Athens at once attacked Naxos, and, after a stern struggle. 




1 


Parthenon. 


7 


Eleusinium. 


"2 


Erechtheum. 


8 


Council HouBe. 


3 


Propylaea. 


9 


TboloB. 


4 


Prytaneum. 


10. 


Temple of Furies 


6 


Temple of Asclepiu 


3.11 


Temple of Ares. 


6 


Monument of 


12 


So-called Prison 




Lvsicrates. 




of Socrates. 



Map of Athens, with some structures of the Roman period. — The term 
"Stoa," which appears so often in this map, means "porch" or portico. 
These porticoes were inclosed by columns, and their fronts along the 
Agora formed a succession of colonnades. Only a few of the famous build- 
ings can be show;n in a map like this. The "Agora" was the great public 
square, or open market place, surrounded by shops and porticoes. It was 
the busiest spot in Athens, the center of the commercial and social life of 
the city, where men met their friends for business or for pleasure. 

brought it to submission. But the conquered state was not 
allowed to return irito the union. It lost its vote in the congress, 
and became a mere subject of Athens. 

From time to time, other members of the League attempted 
secession, and met a like fate. Athens took away their fleets, 
leveled their walls, and made them pay a tribute. Usually a 



158 THE GREEKS — ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 

subject city was left to manage its internal government in its own 
way ; but it could no longer have political allia"nces with other 
cities, and sometimes its citadel was held by an Athenian garrison. 

Under these conditions, Athens grew more and more arbi- 
trary, until she treated the loyal cities much like those that 
had rebelled. The confederacy of equal states became an 
empire, with Athens for its "tyrant city." ^ The meetings of 
the congress ceased altogether. Athens removed the treasury 
from Delos, and began to use the funds and resources of the 
union for her own glory. 

Athens, however, did continue faithfully to do the work for 
which the union had been created ; and on the whole, despite 
the strong tendency to cit}^ independence, the subject cities 
seem to have been well content. In nearly all of them the 
ruling power became an Assembly like that at Athens ; and the 
bulk of the people looked gratefully to Athens for protection 
against the oligarchs. As an Athenian orator said, "Athens was 
the champion of the masses, denying the right of the many to be at 
the mercy of the few." 



For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : The only passage in 
Davis' Readings for this period is I, No. 74, on Cimon. Bury, 228-242, 
covers the period. Instead of Bury, the student may well read Chap- 
ter 1 in Cox's Athenian Empire. Plutarch's Themistocles and Aristides 
continue to be valuable for additional reading. 

1 By 450 B.C. Lesbos, Chios, and Samos were the only states of the League 
which had not become "subject states." Athens, however, had other in- 
dependent ahies that had never belonged to the Delian Confederacy — like 
Plataea and Corcyra in Greece, Rhegium in Italy, and Segesta in Sicily. 



CHAPTER XIII 

FIRST PERIOD OF STRIFE "WITH SPARTA, 461-445 B.C. 

Meantime Sparta and Athens had quarreled, and their strife Rivalry of 
made the history of Hellas for many years. Sparta took the Athens^^ 
first step. In 465 Thasos, a member of the Confederacy of 
Delos, revolted ; and Athens was employed for two years in con- 
quering her. During the struggle, Thasos asked Sparta for aid ; 
and Sparta, though still pretending friendship for Athens, began 
secret preparations to invade Attica. 

This treacherous attack was prevented by a terrible earth- 
quake which destroyed part of Sparta and threw the whole state 
into confusion. The Helots revolted, and Messenia (p. 126) 
made a desperate attempt to regain her independence. Instead 
of attacking Athens, Sparta, in dire need, called upon her for 
aid. 

At Athens this request led to a sharp dispute. The demo- Spartan 
cratic party was opposed to sending help ; but Ciinon (p. 156), ^^ ^ 
leader of the aristocratic party, urged that the true policy was quarrel 
for Sparta and Athens to aid each other in keeping a joint 
leadership of Hellas. Athens, he said, ought not to let her 
yoke-fellow be destroyed and Greece be lamed. This generous 
advice prevailed ; and Cimon led an Athenian army to Sparta's 
rescue. 

A little later, however, the Spartans began to suspect the 
Athenians, groundlessly, of the same bad faith of which they 
knew themselves guilty, and sent back the army with insult. 
Indignation ran high at Athens. Cimon was ostracized (461 
B.C.), and the two great powers of Greece stood in open opposi- 
tion, ready for war. 

The leader of the Athenian democracy now was a young man j "g f^j. 
known as Pericles, already famous as an orator and a general. Athens 

159 



160 THE GREEKS — ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 



Thus far, Athens had been a sea power : Pericles planned to 
make her mistress also of inland Greece, in Sparta's place. 

Sparta's most powerful ally was Corinth. To protect 
herself against conquest by Corinth, little Megara asked 
Athenian protection. To accept Megara as an ally meant war, 
but Pericles welcomed her because of her ports on the Corinthian 
Gulf (map, p. 126). By joining Megara and these ports by long 

walls across the Isthmus, 
Pericles then shut Sparta 
safely up within the Pelo- 
ponnesus. 

In Central Greece, oligar- 
chic Thebes had become 
Sparta's friend. Therefore, 
to lessen the power of 
Thebes, Pericles set up 
democracies in the other 
cities of Boeotia. Phocis 
and Locris then joined 
Athens, — so that she held 
the gate of Central Greece 
at Thermopylae, toward 
the north, as well as that at 
the Isthmus. Beyond those 
gates, even at Sparta's door, Argos leagued herself with Athens ; 
and from the far north, friendly Thessalian chiefs sent their 
famous cavalry to fight Pericles' battles. 

At this time, too, Athens completed her own fortifications by 
building the Long Walls to the Piraeus (maps, pages 147, 154). 
These walls were 30 feet high and 12 feet thick — so that a 
chariot-road ran along the top. They made Athens absolutely 
safe from siege, so long as she could keep her supremacy on the 
sea ; and they added to the city a large open space where the 
country people might take refuge if Attica were invaded. 

The Empire was at its height about the year 460. The 
activity of Athens was amazing, and it is impossible for us even 




Pericles. — A portrait bust now in 
the Vatican, Rome. 



Athenian 
Empire at 



ATHENIAN ENTERPRISE 161 

to name the many instances of her splendid daring. She The 

captured iVegina, her ancient enemy, struck Corinth staggering 

blows again and again, and repeatedly swept the. coasts of the its height 

Peloponnesus, burning the Spartan docks there. At the same 

time, without lessening her usual fleet in the Aegean, she sent 

a mighty armament of 250 ships to continue the war against 

Persia by helping Egypt to revolt. 

Such a fleet called for from 2500 to 5000 soldiers and for 50,000 
sailors. A Greek warship of this period was a "three-banker" (p. 156). 
It was rowed by oarsmen arranged on three benchesj one above another. 
The wars which the Greeks waged in these three-bankers were hardly 
more fierce than those that modern scholars have waged — in ink — 
about them. Some have held that each group of three oarsmen held 
only one oar. This view is now abandoned — because of the evidence 
of the "reliefs" on Greek monuments. Plainly each group of three 
had three separate oars, of different lengths. The oars projected 
through port-holes, and the 174 oarsmen were protected from arrows 
by the wooden sides of the vessel. Sometimes the upper bank had no 
protection. There were about 20 other sailors to each ship, for helms- 
man, lookouts, overseers of the oarsmen, and so on. And a warship 
never carried less than ten fully armed soldiers. The Athenians usu- 
ally sent from 20 to 25 in each ship. 

The ships were about 120 feet long, and less than 20 feet wide. The 
two masts were always lowered for battle. Two methods of attack 
were in use. If possible, a ship crushed in the side of an opponent by 
ramming with its sharp bronze prow. This would sink the enemy's 
ship at once. Almost as good a thing was to run close along her side 
(shipping one's own oars on that side just in time), shivering her long 
oars and hurling her rowers from the benches. This left a ship as help- 
less as a bird with a broken wing. 

Twice, when Athens' hands were fullest and when every avail- 
able man of military age was absent, Corinth managed to land 
an army in Athenian territory. Athens scorned to recall a 
man. Each time her boys and old men drove out the invaders. 

But the resources of the city had been severely strained in Disaster 
these imperialistic schemes, and a sudden series of blows well- ^^^ P®"^ 
nigh ruined her. The expedition to Egypt had at first been 
brilliantly successful, promising to shut Persia off altogether 
from the Mediterranean — and from contact with Europe. 



162 



THE GREEKS — ATHENIAN LEADERSHIP 



But disaster followed, and the ships and whole army in Egypt 
were lost. This stroke alone would have broken down any other 
Greek state. Next, Megara massacred the Athenian garrison 
it had invited in, turning over the Isthmus gate to Sparta, 
and a Spartan army invaded Attica. At the same moment, 
the oligarchs won the upper hand in the Boeotian cities : and 
all Boeotia, except faithful Plataea, fell away from Athens. 




The Acropolis. — A "restoration" by Lambfert. 

The activity and fine generalship of Pericles saved x\ttica 
and the Aegean Empire; but the inland possessions and 
alliances were for the most part lost. In 445 B.C. a Thirty- Years' 
Truce was made with Sparta. The long struggle with Persia 
had worn itself out just before. For the next fifteen years, 
Athens had peace. Then the truce was to be broken by the 
great Peloponnesian War. That struggle ruined the promise of 
Greece. Before taking up its story, we will stop to survey Greek 
life at its highest glory, in the Athens of Pericles. 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, I, 
Nos. 73-75 ; Bury, 352-363. Additional: Cox's Athenian Empire and 
the opening chapters of Grant's Greece in the Age of Pericles and of 
Abbott's Pericles. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE IN PEACE 

I. POWER AND GOVERNMENT 

The Athenians had proved more than a match for huge Athens the 

Persia. Their fame was enough to keep Carthage from renew- ^^^^^^^ 

. . . power of 

ing her attack on Sicily. Their colonies in Thrace easily held the world in 

in check the rising Macedonian kingdom. Rome was still a 4SoB.c. 

barbarous village on the Tiber bank. In the middle of the 

fifth century B.C., the center of power in the world was the 

Athenian Empire. 

The cities of the Empire counted some three millions of people. Population 

The number seems small to us ; but the population of the world ^°^,,. 

^ ^ wealth 

was much smaller then than now, and these were all wealthy, 
progressive communities. 

Attica itself contained 300,000 people (about as many as live 
in Minneapolis). Nearly half of these were slaves or aliens. 
This left some 175,000 citizens, of whom 35,000 were men fit 
for soldiers. Outside Attica, there were 75,000 more citizens, 
— cleruchs (p. 121), whom Pericles had sent to garrison outlying 
parts of the empire. 

The Empire was rich. Athens drew a yearly income of 
about four hundred talents (1440,000 in our values) from her 
Thracian mines and from the port dues and the taxes on alien 
merchants. The tribute from the subject cities amounted 
to 1660,000. This was much less than it would have cost 
the cities merely to defend themselves against pirates, had 
Athenian protection been removed. The Asiatic Greeks paid 
only one sixth as much as they had formerly paid Persia. Athens 
continued to bear her full share of the imperial burden. 

163 . 



164 



THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 



Seventy years had passed between the reforms of CUsthenes 
and the truce with Sparta. During this time the government 
was not made over at any one moment as at the time of Solon 
and of Chsthenes, but it had continued to grow more and more 
democratic. The poorest citizens had been made ehgible for 
office. Otherwise, the change had been not so much in the 
letter of the law as in the spirit of the people — in their will 
and their skill to use their power. Four steps in this develop- 
ment are worth noting. 

1. When Themistocles carried his great measures, like improv- 
ing the Piraeus and building a fleet, he was an Archon. But 
when Pericles guided Athenian policy, he was a General (p. 125). 
The Generals had become the "administration." It was they 
who usually proposed the levy of troops, the building of ships, 
the raising of money, the making of peace or war. Any other 
citizen might propose these things ; but the Assembly was most 
likely to listen to those whom it had chosen to plan for them. 
Then when the Assembly had decided to do any of these things, 
the Generals saw to the execution of them. They could also 
call special meetings of the Assembly at will and they had the 
right to speak in the meeting whenever they wished. 

But any prominent speaker, trusted by the people, was 
known as a "demagogue," or "leader of the people." Though 
out of office, a "leader of the people" exercised greater influence 
than any General without the people's confidence. To make 
things work smoothly, therefore, it was desirable that the Board 
of Generals should contain the most trusted "leader of the 
people" for the time being. 



Pericles was recognized "demagogue" .for many years, and 
was fifteen times elected "president of the Board of Generals." 
Almost always he was the spokesman of that Board before the 
Assembly. For a quarter of a century he was practicallj^ an 
elected dictator. Thucydides calls Athens for this period 
"a democracy in name, ruled really by its ablest citizen." 

Pericles belonged to the ancient nobility of Athens, but 



UNDER PERICLES 



165 



to families that had always taken the side of the people. His 
mother was a niece of Clisthenes. His supremacy rested in no 
way upon flattering arts. His proud reserve verged on haughti- 
ness, and he was rarely seen in public. He scorned to show 
emotion. His stately gravity and unruffled calm were styled 
Olympian by his admirers — who added that, like Zeus, he 
could on occasion overbear opposition by the majestic thunder 
of his oratory. The long and steady confidence given him 




Part of the Pnyx. — The photograph shows httle more than the Bema, 
or platform, from which the speaker faced the people on the gently 
rising hillside, which is not shown. 

honors the people of Athens no less than it honors Pericles him- 
self. His noblest praise is that which he claimed for himself 
upon his deathbed, — that, with all his authority, and despite 
the bitterness of party strife, "no Athenian has had to put on 
mourning because of me." 

2. The Assembly met on the Pnyx, a sloping hill whose side The 
formed a kind of natural theater. There were forty regular Assembly 
meetings each year, and many special meetings. Thus a pa- 
triotic citizen was called upon to give at least one day a week 
to the state in this matter of political meetings alone. 



166 THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 

The Assembly had made great gains in power. All public 
officials had become its obedient servants. The Council 
(p. 119) existed not to guide it, but to do its bidding. The 
Generals were its creatures, and might be deposed by it any 
day. No act of government was too small or too great for it to 
deal with. It was as if the citizens of Boston or Chicago were 
to meet day by day to govern the United States, and, at the 
same time, to attend to all their own local affairs. 

3. "Juries" of citizens had been introduced by Solon, and 
their importance became fully developed under Pericles. Six. 
thousand citizens were chosen each year for this duty, — ^ 
mostly from the older men past the age for active work. One 
thousand of these were held in reserve. The others were divided 
into ten jury courts of five hundred men each. Such a jury 
was "both judge and jury": it decided each case by a ma- 
jority vote, and there was no appeal from its verdict. 

Grumblers and wits said savage things sometimes about 
these juries, very much as like writers attack our judicial 
system to-day. No doubt the Athenian juries gave some 
wrong verdicts. Passion and bribery at times interfered 
with justice. But on the whole the system worked well. 
In particular, any citizen of a subject city, wronged by an 
Athenian officer, was sure of redress before these courts, — 
which was one reason why Athenian officials in subject 
cities behaved well. 

4. Since these courts tried political offenders, it was essential 
that they should not fall wholly into the hands of the rich. To 
prevent this, Pericles wisely introduced a small payment for 
jury duty. The amount, three obols a day (about nine cents), 
would furnish a day's food for one person in Athens, but it 
would not support a family. Afterward payment was extended 
to other political services. It used to be said that such pay- 
ment "corrupted" the Athenians; but it was as proper and 
necessary as payment of congressmen and judges with us. 



UNDER PERICLES 



167 



About 10,000 Athenians were engaged at all times in public Political 
work. Scattered over the empire were some 700 leading officials 
to represent the imperial city, with many assistants. In the 
city itself, there were 700 city officials (overseers of weights 
and measures, harbor inspectors, and so on), 500 Councilmen, 
and the 6000 jurymen. Always about a fourth of the grown-up 
citizens were in the civil service. ^ Many of the offices, too, 
could be held only once by the same man, so that each Athenian 
citizen could count upon serving his city at some time in almost 
every office. 

Such a system could not have worked without a high average 
of intelligence in the people. It did work well. With all its 
faults, the rule of Athens in Greece was vastly superior to the 
rude despotism that followed under Sparta. Indeed it was far 
the wisest and the best that had been seen in any great state 
up to that time. Of the effect upon the Athenians themselves, 
a great English historian has said (Freeman, Federal Govern- 
ment) : 

" The Athenian democracy made a greater number of citizens fit to 
use power than could be made fit by any other system. . . . The 
Assembly was an assembly of citizens — of average citizens — but it 
was an assembly of citizens among whom the political average stood 
higher than it ever did in any other state. . . . The Athenian, by con- 
stantly hearing questions [of government] argued by the greatest 
orators the world ever saw, received a political training which nothing 
else in the history of mankind has been found to equal." 



II. INTELLECT AND ART 

Great as was the service of Hellas to the world in free govern- 
ment, still her chief glory lies in her art and her literature ; 
and it was in the Athens of Pericles that these forms of Greek 
life developed most fully. Pericles made Athens the most 
beautiful city in the world, so that, ever since, her mere ruins 
have enthralled the admiration of men. Greek art was just 

1 Civil service is a term used in contrast to military service. Our post- 
masters are among the civil servants of the United States, as a city engineer 
or a fireman is in the city civil service. 



Architec- 
tural 

splendor of 
Athens 



168 



THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 




INTELLECT AND ART 



169 



reaching perfection; and everywhere in Athens, under the 
charge of the greatest artists of this greatest artistic age, arose 
temples, colonnades, porticoes, inimitable to this day. 

The center of this architectural splendor was the ancient The 
citadel, the Acropolis. That massive rock now became the ^<^'"°Po^s 
" holy hill." No longer needed as a fortification, it was crowned 
with white marble, and devoted to religion and art (p. 162). It 
was inaccessible except on the west. Here was built a stately 




The Propylaea of the Acropolis To-day. — The Temple of the Wingless 
Victory (left) has been shown on a larger scale on page 117. 



stairway of sixty marble steps, leading to a series of noble 
colonnades and porticoes {the Propylaea) of surpassing beauty. 
From these the visitor emerged upon the leveled top of the 
Acropolis, to find himself surrounded by temples and statues, 
any one of which alone might make the fame of the proudest 
modern city. Just in front of the entrance stood the colossal 
bronze statue of Athene the Champion, whose broad spear point, 
glittering in the sun, was the first sign of the city to the 
mariner far out at sea. On the right of the entrance, and 
a little to the rear, was the temple of the Wingless Victory ; 



170 



THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 



and near the center of the open space rose the larger structures 

of the Erechtheum (p. 197) and the Parthenon. 

The Parthenon ("maiden's chamber") was the temple 
of the virgin goddess Athene. It remains peerless in loveli- 
ness among the buildings of the world. It was in the Doric 
style (p. 116), and of no great size, — only some 100 feet by 
250, while the marble pillars supporting its low pediment rose 
only 34 feet from their base of three receding steps. The effect 




I'iGURES FROM THE PARTHENON Frieze. — These sculptures are now in 
the British Museum (p. 171). 

was due, not to the sulilimity and grandeur of vast masses, 
but to the perfection of proportion, to exquisite beauty of line, 
and to the delicacy and profusion of ornament. 

In the pediments were carved fifty life-size or colossal statues ; 
and, within the colonnade, around the entire wall of the inner 
building, ran a broad band of relief sculptures, some four feet 
high, containing nearly 500 figures. This " frieze" represented 
an Athenian procession carrying offerings to the patron goddess 
Athene. All these sculptures, large or small, were finished 
with perfect skill, even in those parts so placed that no 



INTELLECT AND ART 



171 



observer could see them "without going on the roof or opening 
a wall." 1 

The ornamentation of the Parthenon, within and without, Greek 
was cared for by Phidias and his pupils. Phidias still ranks ^^^ ^ ^^^ 
as the greatest of sculptors. Much of the work on the x\crop- 
olis he merely planned, but the great statues of Athene were 
his special work. The bronze statue has already been men- 
tioned. Besides this, there was, toithin the temple, an even 
more glorious statue in gold and ivory, smaller than the other, 
but still five or six times larger than life. 

When the Turks held Greece, they used the Parthenon 
as a powder house. In 1687 an enemy's cannon ball ex- 
ploded the powder, and left the temple in ruins, much as 
we see it to-day. About the year 1800, Lord Elgin secured 
most of the sculptures from the ruin for the British Mu- 
seum, where they are known now as the Elgin Marbles. 



drama 



In the age of Pericles, the chief form of poetry became the 
tragic dravia — the highest development of Greek literature. 
As the tenth century was the epic age, and the seventh and 
sLxth the lyric (p. Ill), so the fifth century begins the dramatic 
period. 

The drama began in the sohgs and dances of a chorus in honor The 
of Dionysus, god of wine, at the spring festival of flowers and 
at the autumn vintage festival. The leader of the chorus 
came at length to recite stories, between the songs. Thespis 
at Athens, in the age of Pisistratus, had developed this leader 
into an ax^tor, — apart from the chorus and carrying on dialogue 
with it. Now Aeschylus added another actor, and his younger 
rival, Sophocles, a third. All the action had to be such as 
could have taken place in one day, and without change of scene. 

1 Compare Longfellow's lines : 

"In the older days of art, 
Builders wrought, with utmost care, 
Each obscure and unseen part, — 
For the gods see everywhere." 



172 



THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE 



Aeschylus, Sophocles, and their successor, Euripides, are the 
three greatest Greek dramatists. Together they produced 
some two hundred tragedies, of which thirty-one survive. 

Comedy also grew out of the worship of the wine god, — not 
from the great religious festivals, however, but from the rude 
village merrymakings. Even upon the stage, comedy kept 

traces of this rude origin in 
occasional coarseness ; and 
it was sometimes misused, 
to abuse men like Pericles 
and Socrates. Still, its 
great master, Aristophanes, 
for his wit and genius, must 
always remain one of the 
bright names in literature. 
Every Greek city had its 
"theater." A theater was 
a semicircular arrangement 
of rising seats, often cut 
into a hillside, with a small 
stage at the open side of 
the circle for the actors. 
There was no inclosed build- 
ing, except sometimes a few 
rooms for the actors, and 
there was none of the gor- 
geous stage scenery which 
has become a chief feature of our theaters. Neither did the 
Greek theater run every night. Performances took place at only 
two periods in the year — at the spring and autumn festivals to 
Dionysus — for about a week each season, and in the daytime. 
The great Theater of Dionysus, in Athens, was on the south- 
east slope of the Acropolis — the rising seats,i cut in a semicircle 

1 The stone seats were not carved out of the hill until somewhat later. 
During the age of Pericles, the men of Athens sat all over the hillside, on 
the ground or on stools which they brought with them. 




Sophocles. — A portrait statue, now in 
the Lateran Museum at Rome. 



INTELLECT AND ART 



173 



into the rocky bluff, looking forth, beyond the stage, to the hills 
of southern Attica and over the blue waters of the Aegean. 
It could seat almost the whole free male population. 

Pericles secured from the public treasury the admission fee 
to the Theater for each citizen who chose to ask for it. The 
Greek stage was the modern pulpit and press in one, and this 
free admission was for religious and intellectual training, rather 
than for amusement. It was a kind of public education for 
grown-up people. 




Theater of Dionysus at Athens — present condition. 



The art of public speech was studied zealously by all who Oratory 
hoped to take part in public affairs. Among no other people 
has oratory been so important and so effective. For almost 
two hundred years, from Themistocles to Demosthenes (p. 210), 
great statesmen swayed the Athenian state by their sonorous 
and thrilling eloquence ; and the citizens, day after day, packed 
the Pnyx (p. 165) to hang breathless for hours upon the persua- 
sive lips of their leaders. 

Unhappily, Pericles did not preserve his orations. But 
fortunately we do still have many of the orations of Demos- 



174 



THE ATHENS OF PERICLES 



thenes, of the next century ; and from them we can understand 
how the union of fiery passion and convincing reasoning and 
poHshed beauty of language made oratory rank with the drama 
and with art as the great means of pubhc education. 



Prose hterature now began, with history as its leading form. 
The three great historians of the time are Herodotus, Thucydides, 
and Xenophon. For charm in story-telling they have never 

been excelled. Herodotus 
was a native of Hali- 
carnassus in Asia Minor. 
He traveled widely, lived 
long at Athens as the friend 
of Pericles, and finally in 
Italy completed his great 
History of the Persian Wars, 
with an introduction cover- 
ing the world's history up 
to that event. Thucydides, 
an Athenian general, wrote 
the history of the Pelopon- 
nesian War (pp. 195 ff.) in 
which he took part. Xeno- 
phon also was an Athenian. 
He completed the story of 
the Peloponnesian War, and gave us, with other works, the 
Anabasis, an account of the expedition of the Ten Thousand 
Greeks through the Persian Empire in 401 B.C. (p. 204). 

The age of Pericles saw also a rapid development in philos- 
ophy,^ — and this movement, too, had Athens for its most 
important home. Anaxagoras of Ionia, the friend of Pericles, 
taught that the ruling principle in the universe was Mind: 
" In the beginning all things were chaos ; then came Intelli- 
gence, and set all in order." He also tried to explain comets 

1 This section can best be read in class, and talked over. It may well be 
preceded by a reading of pp. 112-113 upon the earlier Greek philosophy. 




Thucydides — a portrait bust, now in the 
Capitoline Museum at Rome. 



SOCRATES 175 

and other strange natural phenomena, which had been looked 
upon as miraculous, and he amazed men of his time most of all 
by asserting that the sun was a red-hot mass probably as large 
as the Peloponnesus, 

The philosophers of the sixth century had tried to answer Compared 
the question, — How did the universe come to be ? The philos- ^j-^ei. ^ 
ophers of the age of Pericles asked mainly, — How does man philosophy 
know about the universe? That is, they tried to explain the 
working of the human mind. These early attempts at explana- 
tion were not very satisfactory, and so next came the Sophists, 
with a skeptical philosophy. Man, the Sophists held, cannot 
reach the truth itself, but must be content to know only appear- 
ances. 

Socrates is sometimes confounded with the Sophists. Like Socrates 
them, he abandoned the attempt to understand the material 
universe, and ridiculed gently the attempted explanations of 
his friend, Anaxagoras. But he really differed widely from the 
Sophists. He took for his motto, "Know thyself," and consid- 
ered philosophy to consist in right thinking upon human conduct. 
True wisdom, he taught, is to know what is good and to do what 
is right; and he tried to make his followers see the difference 
between justice and injustice, temperance and intemperance, 
virtue and vice. 

Thus Socrates completes the circle of ancient philosophy. 

1. Thales and his followers (p. 112) tried to find out how the 
world came to be — out of what "first principle" it arose (water, 
fire, etc.). 

2. Anaxagoras and his contemporaries tried to find out how 
man's mind could understand the outside world. (His teach- 
ing that mind was the real principle of the universe formed a 
natural step from 1 to 2.) 

3. The Sophists declared all search for such explanations a 
failure — beyond the power of the human mind. 

4. Socrates sought to know, not about the outside world 
at all, but about himself and his duties. 



176 



THE ATHENS OF PERICLES 



Socrates was a poor man, an artisan who carved little images 
of the gods for a living ; and he constantly vexed his wife, 
Xanthippe, by neglecting his trade, to talk in the market place. 
He wore no sandals, and dressed meanly. His large bald head 
and ugly face, with its thick lips and flat nose, made him good 
sport for the comic poets. His practice was to entrap unwary 
antagonists into public conversation by asking innocent-look- 
ing questions, and then, by the inconsistencies of their answers, 
to show how shallow their opinions were. This proceeding 
afi^orded huge merriment to the crowd of youths who followed 
the bare-footed philosopher, and it made him bitter enemies 
among his victims. But his beauty of soul, his devotion to 
knowledge, and his largeness of spirit make him the greatest 
name in Greek history. 

When seventy years old (399 B.C.) Socrates was accused of 
impiety and of corrupting the youth. He refused to defend 
himself in any ordinary way, and was therefore declared guilty. 
His accusers then proposed a death penalty. It was the privi- 
lege of the condemned man to propose any other penalty, and 
let the jury choose between the two. Instead of proposing a 
considerable fine, as his friends wished, Socrates said first that he 
really ought to propose that he be maintained in honor at the 
public expense, but, in deference to his friends' entreaties, he 
finally proposed a small fine. The angered jury, by a close vote^ 
pronounced the death penalty. 

It happened that the trial had taken place just before the 
annual sailing of a sacred ship to Delos to a festival of Apollo. 
According to Athenian law, .no execution could take place 
until the return of this vessel. Thus for thirty days Socrates 
remained in jail, conversing daily in his usual manner with 
groups of friends who visited him. Two of his disciples (Plato 
and Xenophon) have given us accounts of these talks. On 
the last day, the theme was immortality. Some of the friends 
fear that death may be an endless sleep, or that the soul, on 
leaving the body, may " issue forth like smoke . . . and vanish 
into nothingness." But Socrates comforts and consoles them, — 



SOCRATES 



177 



convincing them, by a long day's argument, that the soul is 
immortal, and picturing the lofty delight he anticipates in 
questioning the heroes and sages of olden times when he meets 
them soon in the abode of the blest. Then, just as the fatal 
hour arrives, one of the company (Crito) asks, "In what way 
would you have us bury you ? " Socrates rejoins : 

" ' In any way you like : only you must first get hold of me, and take 
care that I do not walk away from you.' Then he turned to us, and 
added, with a smile : ' I cannot make Crito believe that / am the same 
Socrates who has been talking with you. He fancies that I am another 
Socrates whom he will soon see a dead body — • and he asks, How shall 
he bury me? I have spoken many words to show that I shall leave 
you and go to the joys of the blessed. ... Be of good cheer, then, my 
dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only — and do with 
that what is usual, or as you think best.' " 

Friends of Socrates had made arrangements for his escape 
from prison before the day set for his execution ; but he stead- 
fastly refused to go. To their pleadings he answered only by 
a playful discourse to the effect that " Death is no evil ; but for 
Socrates to 'play truant' and injure the laws of his country, 
would be an evil." And so he drank the fatal hemlock with a 
gentle jest upon his lips.i His condemnation is the greatest 
blot upon the intelligence of the Athenian democracy. 

In the fifth century B.C. Athens gave birth to more great 
men of the first rank, it has been said, than the whole world has 
ever produced in any other equal period of time, and to that 
same center there swarmed other famous men from less-favored 
parts of Hellas. Despite the condemnation of Socrates, no 
other city in the world afforded such freedom of thought, and 
nowhere else was ability, in art or literature, so appreciated. 
The names that have been mentioned give but a faint impres- 
sion of the splendid throngs of brilliant poets, artists, philoso- 
phers, and orators, who jostled one another in the streets of 
the beautiful city that clustered round the temple-crowned 
Acropolis. 

1 Other anecdotes of Socrates are given in Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 89-92. 



Extent of 
Athenian 
culture 



178 



THE ATHENS OF PERICLES 



Pericles' At the close of the second year of the Peloponnesian War, 

glorification Pericles dehvered a great oration in honor of the Athenian 

of Athens . . , 

dead. This famous speech, as Thucydides reports it, contained, 
a splendid glorification of the Athenian spirit. 

" And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many 
relaxations from toil. ... In the matter of education, whereas our 
adversaries from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises 
which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally 
ready to face the perils which they face. . . . 




The Acropolis To-day. — Cf. p. 162. 



"We are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; and we culti- 
vate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for 
talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow 
poverty with us is no disgrace ; the true disgrace is in doing nothing 
to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because 
he takes care of his own household ; and even those of us who are en- 
gaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We regard a man 
who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a mis- 
chievous character. . . . 

" In the hour of trial, Athens is superior to the report of her. No 
enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he 



THE WEAK SIDE 



179 



sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his 
masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without 
witnesses. There are mighty monuments of our power which will 
make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages. . . . For we have 
compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and 
have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of 
our enmity. . . . Athens is the school of Hellas." 

Three limitations in Greek culture must be noted : Limitations 

1. It rested on slavery. The main business of the citizen ^^^^^^ 
was government and wslt. Trades and commerce were left 




Greek Girls at Play. — Vase painting. 

largely to the free non-citizen class, and unskilled hand labor 
was performed mainly by slaves. As a rule, it is true, this 
slavery was not harsh. The slaves were frequently Greeks, of 
the same speech and culture as their masters ; but in some ways, 
this made their lot all the harder to bear. There was always 
the possibility of cruelty; and in the mines, even in Attica, 
the slaves were killed off brutally by merciless hardships. 

2. Greek culture was for males only. It is not likely that 
the wife of Phidias or of Thucydides could read. The women 
of the working classes, especially in the country, necessarily 



180 THE ATHENS OF PERICLES 

mixed somewhat with men in their work. But among the 
well-to-do, women had lost the freedom of the simple and rude 
society of Homer's time, without gaining much in return. Ex- 
cept at Sparta, Where physical training was thought needful 
for them, they passed a secluded life even at home, in sepa- 
rate women's apartments. They had no public interests, ap- 
peared rarely on the streets, and never met their husbands' 
friends. At best, they were only higher domestic servants. 

The rule is merely emphasized by its one exception. No ac- 
count of the Athens of Pericles should omit mention of Aspasia. 
She was a native of Miletus, and had come to Athens as an ad- 
venturess. There she won the love of Pericles. Since she was 
not an Athenian citizen he could not marry her ; but, until his 
death, she lived with him in all respects as his wife — a union 
not grievously offensive to Greek ideas. The dazzling wit and 
beauty of Aspasia made her home the focus of the intellectual 
life of Athens. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Phidias, Herodotus, de- 
lighted in her conversation ; and Pericles consulted her on the 
most important public matters. But she is the only woman 
who need be named in Greek history after the time of Sappho 
and Corinna (p. 112). 

3. With all their intellectual power, the Greeks of Pericles' 
day had not thought of finding out the secrets of nature by 
experiment. They had only such knowledge of the world 
about them as they had chanced upon, or such as they could 
attain by observation of nature as she showed herself to them. 
To ask questions, and make nature answer them by sys- 
tematic experiment, is a method of reaching knowledge which 
belongs, in any marked degree, only to recent times. But, 
before the Greeks, men had reached about all the mastery 
over nature that was possible without that method. The 
Greek mind achieved wonders in literature and art and philos- 
ophy ; but it did little to advance man's power over nature. 

This limitation should not be overrated. We sometimes 
think of civilization as consisting mainly in material comforts. 
The Greeks knew little of such things. It is none too easy for 



MORAL IDEAS 



181 



us really to picture a world without railways, or telegraphs, 
or automobiles, or telephones, or electric lights, or gas, or coal, 
or refrigerator cars to bring to our breakfast table the fruits 
of distant lands. But, to make the Greek world at all real to 
us, we must peel off from our world much more than. this. We 
must think of even the best houses without plumbing — or 
drains of any sort; beds without sheets or springs; rooms 
without fire ; traveling 
without bridges and with- 
out even a stage coach; 
shoes without stockings ; 
clothes without buttons, or 
even a hook and eye. The 
Greek had to tell time with- 
out a watch, and to cross 
seas without a compass. 
He was civilized without 
being what we should call 
"comfortable." But, per- 
haps all the more, he felt keenly the beauty of sky and hill 
and temple and statue and the human form. 

In one important respect, however, this lack of control 
over nature was a serious lack. Without modern scientific 
knowledge, and modern machinery, it has never been possible 
for man to produce wealth fast enough so that many could 
take sufficient leisure for refined and graceful living. There 
was too little wealth to go round. The civilization of the few 
rested necessarily upon slavery. This third limitation was the 
cause of the first. 




Greek Women at Their Music. ■ 
painting. 



■Vase 



The moral side of Greek culture falls short of the intellectual Religion and 



side. Their religion had little to do with conduct toward men. 
The good sense and clear thinking of the Greeks had freed 
their religion from the grossest features of Oriental worship ; 
but their moral ideas are to be sought mainly in their philosophy 
and literature, rather than in their stories about the gods. 



morals 



182 THE ATHENS OF PERICLES 

The Greeks accepted frankly the search for pleasure as nat- 
ural and proper. Self-sacrifice had little place in their ideal; 
but they did deeply admire the beauty of self-control and mod- 
eration. No society ever produced so many great men, but 
many societies have produced better men. The wily Themis- 
tocles, rather than Socrates or Pericles, is the typical Greek 
hero. 

At the same time, a few Greek teachers give us some of the 
noblest morality of the world, as the following brief quotations 
show: 

a. From Aeschylus. 

"Justice shines in smoke-grimed houses and holds in regard the life 
that is righteous ; she leaves with averted eyes the gold-bespangled 
palace which is unclean, and goes to the abode that is holy." 

b. Antigone, the heroine of a play by Sophocles, had knowingly in- 
curred the penalty of death by disobeying an unrighteous command of 
a wicked king. She justified her deed proudly, — 

" Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough 
That thou, a mortal man, should'st overpass 
The unwritten laws of God that know no change." 

c. From Socrates to his Judges after his condemnation to death 
(Plato's Apology). — "Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about 
death, and know this of a truth — that no evil can happen to a good 
man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the 
gods. . . . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — 
I to die, you to live. Which is better, God only knows." 

d. From Plato (the greatest disciple of Socrates, p. 231). — "My 
counsel is that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow justice 
and virtue. . . . Thus we shall live dear to one another and to the 
gods, both while remaining here, and when, like conquerors in the games, 

' we go to receive our reward." 

e. A Prayer of Socrates (from Plato's Phaedrus). — "Beloved Pan, 
and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the in- 
ward soul ; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I 
reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of 
gold as none but the temperate can carry." 



MORAL IDEAS 183 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, I, 
Nos. 76-80 (11 pages, mostly from Plutarch and Thucydides) ; and 
Nos. 88-97 (24 pages on moral ideas) ; Bvu-y, 363-378. 

Additional: Readable treatments will be found in Cox's Athenian 
Empire, Grant's Age of Pericles, or Abbott's Pericles. Dr. Davis' 
Victor of Salamis is the best fiction. A Day in Old Athens, by the 
same author, is a vivid presentation of various matters touched upon 
in this and the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XV 

LIFE IN THE AGE OF PERICLES 

Houses, even those of the rich, were very simple. The poor 
could not afford more ; and the rich man thought his house of 
little account. It was merely a place to keep his women folk 
and young children and some other valuable property, and to 
sleep in. His real life was passed outside. 

The poor man's house was a one-story mud hut ; and even a 
"well-to-do" house was merely a wooden frame, covered with 
sun-dried clay. Houses were built flush with the street, and on 
a level with it, — without even sidewalk or steps between. 
The door, too, usually opened out — so that passers-by were 
liable to bumps, unless they kept well to the middle of the 
narrow street. 

These buildings have not left many remains ; and most of 
what we know about them comes from brief references in Greek 
literature. On the opposite page is given the ground plan of 
one of the few private houses of the fifth century which has been 
unearthed in a state to be traced out. This house was at 
Delos ; and it was something of a mansion, for the times. 

The street door opened into a small vestibule (A), about six feet by 
ten. This led to a square " hall " (D, D, D, D), which was the central 
feature of every Greek house of importance. In the center of the hall 
there was a " court," open to the sky, and surrounded by a row of columns 
ten feet high. The columns were to uphold their side of the hall ceiling, 
— since the hall had no wall next the court. The court was paved with 
a beautiful mosaic. (Commonly, however, all floors in private houses 
were made of concrete, or merely of beaten earth.) 

From the hall there opened six rooms more. The largest (H) was 
the dining room and kitchen, with a smaU recess for the chimney in one 
corner. The other rooms were store rooms, or sleeping rooms. Any 

184 



HOMES AND HOME LIFE 



185 



overflow of guests could be taken care of by couches in the hall. This 
whole floor was for males only. There was an upper story for the 
women, reached by a steep stairway in the lower hall, and projecting, 
perhaps, part waj^ over the street. Near the street door, on the outside, 
there was a niche in the wall for the usual statue of Hermes. 

If a rich man's house had only one story, there was at the 
rear a second half for the women, connected with the men's 
half by a door in the partition wall. This rear half of the house, 
in such cases, had its own central hall and open court, and an 
arrangement of rooms similar to that in the front half. 




Plan of a Fifth Century Delos House. — After Gardiner and Jevons. 



The doorways of the interior were usually hung with cur- 
tains ; but store rooms had doors with bronze locks. Bronze 
keys are sometimes found in the ruins. The door between the 
men's and women's apartments was kept locked : only the 
master of the house, his wife, and perhaps a trusted slave, had 
keys to it. Sometimes a rear door opened into a small, walled 
garden. 

City houses were crowded close together, with small chance 
for windows on the sides. Sometimes narrow slits in the wall 
opened on the street. Otherwise, except for the one street 
door, the front was a blank wall. The Greeks did not have 
glass panes for windows. The houses were dark; and most of 



186 



THE AGE OF PERICLES 



the dim light came from openings on the central court, through 
the hall. 

In cold damp weather (of which, happily, there was not much), 
the house was exceedingly uncomfortable. The kitchen had 
a real chimney, with cooking arrangements like those in an- 
cient Cretan houses (p. 88). But for other rooms the only 
artificial heat came from small fires of wood or charcoal in 
braziers, — such as are still carried from room to room, on occa- 
sion, in Greece or Italy or Spain. The choking fumes which 
filled the room were not much more desirable than the cold, 
which they did little to drive away. Sometimes a large open 
fire in the court gave warmth to the hall. At night, earthen- 
ware lamps, on shelves or brackets, furnished light. There 
were no bathrooms, and no sanitary conveniences. 

Professional lodging houses had begun to appear, with several 
stories of small rooms, for unmarried poor men and for slaves 
who could not find room in the master's house. 

The residence streets were narrow and irregular, — hardly 
more than crooked, dark alleys. They had no pavement; 
they were littered with all the filth and refuse from the houses ; 
and slops from upper windows sometimes doused unwary 
passers-by. Splendid as were the public portions of Athens, 
the residence quarters were much like a squalid Oriental city 
of to-day. Public fountains, supplied by aqueducts (p. 122) 
with pure water, furnished drinking water; but there was no 
provision for sewers or for flushing the streets with water. 
Wealthy men were beginning to build more comfortably on the 
hills near the city ; but war kept this practice from becoming 
common. 

In the Oriental lands a man was at liberty to have as many 
wives in his household as he chose to support. Poor men usually 
were content with one ; but, among the rich, pol^^gamy was 
the rule. A Greek had only one wife. Imperfect as Greek family 
life was, the adoption of "monogamy" was a great step forward. 

The Homeric poems give many pictures of lovely home life ; 
and the Homeric women meet male guests and strangers with a 



HOMES AND HOME LIFE 



187 



natural dignity and ease. In historic Greece, as we have noted 
(p. 120), this freedom for women had been lost — except, in some 
degree, at Sparta. Marriage was arranged by parents. The 
young people as a rule had never seen each other. Girls 
were married very young — by fifteen or earlier. Not till the 




Vase Painting of Women at Their Toilet. 

evening before her marriage did the girl put away her doll, — 
offering it then solemnly on the shrine of the goddess Artemis. 
Among the wealthy classes, the wives spent the rest of their 
days indoors — except on some rare festival occasions. The 
model wife learned to oversee the household (Davis, Readings, 
I, No. 99) ; but in most homes this duty was left to trained 



188 THE AGE OF PERICLES 

slaves, and the wife dawdled away the day listlessly at her toilet 
or in vacant idleness, much as in an Eastern harem to-day, 
waiting for a visit from her master. The vase pictures show 
her commonly with a mirror. Unwholesome living led to 
excessive use of red and white paint, and other cosmetics, to 
imitate the complexion of youth. 

Law and public opinion allowed the father to "expose" a 
new-born child to die. This practice was common among the 
poor, especially for girl babies. Boys were valued more. They 
would offer sacrifices, in time, at the father's tomb, and they 
could fight for the city. Till the age of seven, boys and girls 
lived together in the women's apartments. Then the boy began 
his school life (p. 192). The girl continued her childhood until 
marriage. Much of her time was spent at music and in 
games. One very common game was like our " Jackstones," 
except that it was played with little bones. 

Greek dress is well known, as to its general effect, from 
pictures and sculpture. Women of the better classes wore 
flowing garments, fastened at the shoulders with clasp-pins, and 
gathered in graceful loose folds at the waist. The robe was 
so draped as to leave the arms, and sometimes one shoulder, 
bare. Outside the house, the woman wore also a kind of long 
mantle, which was often drawn up over the head. 

The chief article of men's dress was a sleeveless shirt of plain 
white linen or wool, which fell about to the knees. For active 
movements, this was often clasped with a girdle about the 
waist, and shortened by being drawn up so as to fall in folds 
over the girdle. Over this was draped a long mantle, merely 
an oblong piece of white cloth, without fastenings, falling in 
folds to the feet. {See Sophocles on -p. 11 2.) The soles of the feet 
were commonly protected by sandals. Socrates went barefooted ; 
and this was the rule at Sparta for all men under middle age. 

Good "society" looked down upon all forms of money- 
making by personal exertion. A physician who took pay for 
his services was despised almost as much as was a carpenter 
or shoemaker. This attitude is natural to a slaveholding society. 



DAILY LIFE 



189 



It contains less promise for mankind than does even our modern 
worship of the dollar. The Greek wanted money enough to 
supply all the comforts that he knew about ; but he wanted it 
to come without his earning it. He was very glad to have 
slaves earn it for him. 

Most of the hand labor was busied in tilling the soil. The 
farmer manured his land skillfully ; but otherwise he made no 
advance over the Egyptian farmer — who had not been com- 
pelled to enrich his land. Some districts, like Corinth and 
Attica, could not furnish food enough for their populations 




Vase Painting, showing the Trojan prince enticing Helen away. The 
painting is of the fifth century, and shows styles of dress of that time. 



from their own soil. Athens imported grain from other parts 
of Hellas and from Thrace and Egypt. This grain was paid 
for, in the long run, by the export of her factories (p. 109). 
Davis' Readings (I, No. 76) gives a list of twenty-five handi- 
craft^ used in beautifying the Acropolis. In these factories, 
the place taken now by machinery was taken then, in large part, 
by slaves. The owner of a factory did not commonly own all 
the slaves employed in it. Any master of a skilled slave might 
"rent" him out to a factory. 

The villages of Attica, outside Athens, were mainly occupied 
by farmers and farm laborers. Commerce (as well as much -nr ji. « *i._ 
maniifacturing) was centered in the Piraeus. In Athens, the poor 



190 



THE AGE OF PERICLES 



poorer classes worked at their trades or in their shops from sun- 
rise to sunset — with a hoHday about one day in three. Their 
pay was small, because of the competition of slave labor ; but 
they needed little pay to give them most of the comforts of 
the rich — except constant leisure. And we must understand 
that the Greek artisan — sometimes even the slave — took a 
noble pride in his work. The stone masons who chiseled out the 

fluted columns of the Par- 
thenon felt themselves fel- 
low workmen with Phidias 
who carved the pediments. 
The Greek artisan worked 
deliberately and found de- 
light in his work. 

A rich Athenian citizen 
owned lands outside the 
city, worked by slaves and 
managed by some trusted 
steward. Probably he also 
had money invested in 
trading vessels, though he 
left their management to 
agents in the Piraeus. 
Some revenue he drew from 
money at interest with the 
bankers; and he drew large sums, too, from the "rent" of 
slaves to the factories. 

Like the poorer citizens, the rich man rose with the sun. A 
slave poured water over his face and hands, or perhaps over his 
naked body, from a basin. (Poor men like Socrates bathed at 
the public fountains.) He then broke his fast on a cup of wine 
and a dry crust of bread. Afterward, perhaps he rode into the 
country, to visit one of his farms there, or for a day's hunting. 
If, instead, he remained within the city, he left his house 
at once, stopping, probably, at a barber's, to have his beard 
and finger nails attended to, as well as to gather the latest 




Greek Barber, in Terra Cotta ; from 
Tanagra. 



DAILY LIFE 191 

news from the barber's talk. The latter half of the morning 
would find him strolling through the shaded arcades about the 
market place, among throngs of his fellows, greeting acquaint- 
ances and stopping for conversation with friends — with whom, 
sometimes, he sat on the benches that were interspersed among 
the colonnades. At such times, he was always followed by one 
or two handsome slave boys, to run errands. At midday, he 
returned home for a light lunch. In the afternoon, if a student, 
he took to his rolls of papyrus. If a statesman, perhaps he 
prepared his speech for the next meeting of the Assembly. 
Sometimes, he visited the public gaming houses or the clubs. 
Then he bathed at a public bathing house, hot, cold, or vapor 
bath, as his taste decided ; and here again he held conversation 
with friends, while resting, or while the slave attendants rubbed 
him with oil and ointment. The bath was usually preceded by 
an hour or more of exercise in a gymnasium. 

Toward sunset, he once more visited his home, unless he was 
to dine out. If the evening meal was to be, for a rare occasion, 
at home and without guests, he ate with his family, — his wife 
sitting at the foot of the couch where he reclined; and soon after- 
ward he went to bed. More commonly, he entertained guests — 
whom he had invited to dinner as he met them at the market 
place in the morning — or he was himself a guest elsewhere. 

Such days were not allowed to become monotonous at Athens. 
For several years of his life, the citizen was certain to be busied 
most of the time in the service of the state (p. 167). At other 
times, the meetings of the Assembly and the religious festivals 
and the theater took at least one day out of every three. 

The evening banquet played a large part in Greek life. 
As guests arrived, they took their places in pairs, on couches, 
which were arranged around the room, each man reclining on 
his left arm. Slaves removed the sandals or shoes, wash- 
ing the dust from the feet, and passed bowls of water for the 
hands. They then brought in low three-legged tables, one 
before each couch, on which they afterward placed course after 
course of food. 



192 



THE AGE OF PERICLES 



The meals were simple. Food was cut into small pieces in 
the kitchen. No forks or knives were used at table. Men 
ate with a spoon, or, more commonly, with the fingers ; and 
at the close, slaves once more passed bowls for washing the 
hands. When the eating was over, the real business of the 




School Scenes. — A Bowl Painting. — Instruments of instruction, mostly- 
musical, hang on the walls. In the first half, one instructor is correcting 
the exercise of a boy who stands before him. Another is showing how 
to use the flute. The seated figures, with staffs, are "pedagogues." 



evening began — with the wine. This was mixed with water, 
and drunkenness was not common ; but the drinking lasted 
late, with serious or playful talk, and singing and storj'^-telling, 
and with forfeits for those who did not perform well any part 
assigned them by the "master of the feast" (one of their 



GREEK SCHOOL LIFE 



193 



number chosen by the others when the wine appeared). Often 
the host had musicians come in, with jugglers and dancing 
girls. Respectable women never appeared on these occasions. 
Only on marriage festivals, or some special family celebration, 
did the women of a family meet male guests at all. 

Education at Athens was in marked contrast with Spartan Education 
education (p. 128). It aimed to train harmoniously the intellect, 
the sense of beauty, the 
moral nature, and the 
body. At the age of 
seven the boy entered 
school, but he was con- 
stantly under the eye 
not only of the teacher, 
but of a trusted ser- 
vant of his own family, 
called a pedagogue, i 
The chief subjects for 
study were Homer and 
music. Homer, it has 
well been said, was to 
the Greek as Bible, 
Shakespeare, and Rob- 
inson Crusoe. The boy 

learned to write on papyrus with ink. But papyrus was 
costly, and the elementary exercises were carried on with a 
sharp instrument on tablets coated with wax. No great pro- 
ficiency was expected from the average rich youth in writing — 
since he would have slaves do most of it for him in after life. 
The schoolmaster indulged in cruel floggings on slight occasion 
(Davis' Readings, I, No. 94). 

Physical training began with the child and continued through 
old age. No Greek youth would pass a day without devot- 
ing some hours to developing his body and to overcoming 
any physical defect or awkwardness that he might have. All 
' The word meant " boy-leader." Its use for " teacher" is later. 




The Wrestlers. — Myi-on. 



194 



THE AGE OF PERICLES 



classes of citizens, except those bound by necessity to the work- 
shop, met for exercise. The result was a perfection of physical 
power and beauty never attained so universally by any other 
people. 

Imaginative Exercises. — 1. A captive Persian's letter to a friend 
after Plataea. 2. A dialogue between Socrates and Xanthippe. 
3. An address by a Messenian to his fellows in their revolt against 
Sparta. 4. Extracts from a diary of Pericles. 5. A day at the Olympic 
games (choose some particular date). 




Greek Women. — From a vase painting. 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR 



431-404 B.C. 

The cities of the Athenian empire were Ionian in blood, Distrust 

democratic in poUtics, commercial in interests. Most of the ^^^^^^'^ 

. . . Sparta and 

cities of the Peloponnesian league were Dorian in blood and Athens 

aristocratic in politics, and their citizens were landowners. 

Athens stood for progress. Sparta was the champion of old 

ways. The differences between the Athenian and Spartan 

states gave rise to mutual distrust and dislike. It was easy 

for any misunderstanding to ripen into war. 

Still, if none of the Peloponnesian cities had had interests on Sparta 
the sea, the two powers might each have gone its own way }!^^^^^ *^^ 
without crossing the other's path. But Corinth and Megara 
(members of Sparta's league) were trading cities ; and, with 
the growth of the Athenian Empire, they felt the basis of their 
prosperity slipping from under them. They had lost the trade 
of the Aegean ; and now Athens was reaching out also for the 
commerce of the western coasts of Greece. So Corinth persuaded 
Sparta to take up arms against Athens, before the Thirty Years' 
Truce (p. 162) had run quite half its length. 

As an excuse ^ for war, Sparta sent an insolent demand that 
"tyrant Athens" set free the Aegean cities: "then she might 
still have peace with Sparta." For answer, the Athenian 
Assembly voted a resolution moved by Pericles : — 

"We will grant independence to the cities ... as soon as the Spartans 
allow their subject states [Messenia and the subject towns of Laconia] 
to be governed as they choose, and not by the will and interest of 

1 Special report : the narrative of the deliberations at Sparta regarding 
war or peace (note especially Thucydides' account of the Corinthian speech 
regarding Sparta and Athens in Davis' Readings, I, No. 77). 

195 



196 



THE GREEKS 



Sparta. We are willing also to offer arbitration, according to the treaty 
[the treaty of the Thirty Years' Truce]. We do not want to begin 
war, but shall know how to defend ourselves if we are attacked." 

As Pericles frankly warned the Assembly, this reply meant 
war. And so in 431 began the " Peloponnesian War." 

The Peloponnesian league could muster a hundred thousand 
hoplites, against whom in that day no army in the world could 
stand ; but it could not keep many men in the field longer than 
a few weeks. Sparta could not hope to capture Athens, there- 
fore, and must depend upon ravaging Attic territory and induc- 
ing Athenian allies to revolt. 

Athens had only some twenty-six thousand hoplites at her 
command, and half of these were needed for distant garrison 
duty. But she had a navy even more unmatched on the sea than 
the Peloponnesian army was on land. Her walls were impreg- 
nable. The islands of Euboea and Salamis, and the open spaces 
within the Long Walls, she thought, could receive her country 
people with their flocks and herds. Grain ships from the 
Black Sea coasts could enter the Piraeus as usual, however the 
Spartans might hold the open country of Attica. Athens could 
support her population for a time from her annual revenues 
and from the immense surplus of 6000 talents ($6,600,000) in 
her treasury. 

When war began, the Spartans marched each year into 
Attica with overwhelming force, and remained there for some 
weeks, laying waste the crops, burning the villages, and cut- 
ting down the olive groves, up to the very walls of Athens. At 
first, with frenzied rage, the Athenians clamored to march 
out against the invader ; but Pericles strained his great au- 
thority to prevent such a disaster, and finally he convinced 
the people that they must bear this insult and ruin with 
patience. Meantime, an Athenian fleet was always sent to 
ravage the coasts and harbors of Peloponnesus and to conquer 
various exposed allies of Sparta. Each party could inflict 
considerable damage, but neither could get at the other to strike a 
vital blow. The war promised to be a matter of endurance. 



WAR BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA 



197 



Athens had the stronger motive for holding out. She could 
not give up without ruin. Sparta could cease fighting without 
loss to herself ; and Pericles hoped to tire her out. 

But a tragic disaster fell upon Athens, which no one in that The plague 
day could have foreseen. A terrible plague had been ravaging ^ Athens 
western Asia, and in the second year of the war it reached the 
Aegean. In Athens it was peculiarly deadly. The people of 




A Portico of the Erechtheum To-day ("Porch of the Maidens"). — 
See p. 168. This use of the human figure for columns, to sustain weight, 
is very rare in Greek architecture, and is not wholly pleasing, even 
though the artist has secured an effect of serene repose. 

all Attica, crowded into the one city, were living under unusual 
and unwholesome conditions ; and the pestilence returned there 
each summer for several years. It slew more than a fourth of the 
-population, paralyzed industry, and shattered for years the 
proud and joyous self-trust of the Athenian people. Says 
Thucydides, an eye witness : 

" The new arrivals from the country were the greatest sufferers, — 
lodged during this hot season in stifling huts, where- death raged with- 
out check. The bodies of dying men lay one upon another, and half- 



198 



THE GREEKS 



dead creatures reeled about the streets, poisoning all the fountains and 
weUs with their bodies, in their longing for water. The sacred places 
in which they had camped were full of corpses ; for men, not knouring 
what was to become of them, became wholly careless of everything^ 

The causes of the pestilence are told by the same author : — • 
"When the country people of Attica arrived in Athens," he says, 
"a few had homes of their own, or found friends to take them in. 

But far the greater number 
had to find a place to live 
on some vacant spot or in 
the temples of the gods and 
chapels of the heroes. . . . 
Many also camped down 
in the towers of the walls, 
or wherever else they 
could ; for the city proved 
too small to hold them." 
And, adds Thucydides 
with grim irony, "While 
these country folk were 
dividing the spaces be- 
tween the Long Walls and 
settling there," the Gen- 
erals and Council were 
" paying great attention to 
mustering a fleet for rav- 
aging the Peloponnesian 
coasts." 

The war dragged along with varying success for twenty- 
seven years — a whole generation growing up from the cradle 
to manhood in incessant war. The contest ruined all hope of a 
free and united Greece; but after all it was not of such lasting 
importance as the preceding struggle hetioeen the Greek and Persian 
civilizations ; and only a few incidents require mention. 

The deadliest blow of the plague was the striking down of 
Pericles in the third year of the war. Never had the Athenians 




The Hermes of Praxiteles. — Praxiteles 
rivaled his master, Phidias (p. 171) ; and 
this statue, though so sadly mutilated, 
remains one of the most famous surviv- 
ing masterpieces of Greek art. At 
Rome there is a beautiful copy of Prax- 
iteles' Satyr — which plays a part in 
Hawthorne's story, The Marble Faun. 
See p. 199. 



WAR BETWEEN ATHENS AND SPARTA 



199 



so needed his calm and fearless judgment. He was succeeded 
by a new class of leaders, — men of the people, like Cleon the 
tanner, — men of strong will and much force, but rude, un- 
trained, and ready to surrender their own convictions in order 
to win the favor of the crowd. Such men led Athens into 
many blunders and crimes. Over against them stood only a 
group of incapable aristocrats, led by Nicias, a good but stupid 
man, and Alcibiades, a bril- 
liant, unprincipled ad- 
venturer. 

The turning-point in the 
war was an unwise and 
misconducted Athenian 
expedition against Syra- 
cuse, a Dorian city which 
had been encroaching up- 
on Ionian allies of Athens 
in Sicily. Two hundred 
perfectly equipped Athe- 
nian ships and over forty 
thousand men — among 
them eleven thousand of 
the flower of the Athenian 
hoplites — were pitifully 
sacrificed in Sicily by the 
superstition and miserable 
generalship of their leader, 
Nicias (413 b.c). 

Even after this crushing disaster Athens refused peace that 
should take away her empire. Every nerve was strained, and 
the last resources and reserve funds exhausted, to build and 
man new fleets. The war lasted nine years more, and part of 
the time Athens seemed as supreme in the Aegean as ever. 
Two things are notable in the closing chapters of the struggle, 
— the attempt to overthrow democracy in Athens, and Sparta's 
betrayal of the Asiatic Greeks to Persia. 




Athenian 
disaster 
in Sicily 



Copy of a Satyr by Praxiteles. — This 
is Hawthorne's "Marble Faun." 



200 



THE GREEKS 



1. For a century, the oligarchic party had hardly raised its 
head in Athens ; but in 411, it attempted once more to seize the 
government. Wealthy men of moderate opinions were wearied 
by the heavy taxation of the war. The democracy had shown 
itself unfit to deal with foreign relations, where secrecy and 
dispatch were essential ; and its new leaders were particularly 
offensive to the old Athenian families. 

Under these conditions, the officers of the fleet conspired 
with secret oligarchic societies at home. Leading democrats 
were assassinated ; and the Assembly was terrorized into sur- 
rendering its powers to a council of Four Hundred of the oli- 
garchs. But this body proved more incompetent than the 
Assembly had been, except in murder and plunder. After a 
few months, the Athenian fleet deposed its oligarchic officers. 
Then the democracy at home expelled the Four Hundred and 
restored the old government. 

2. In 412, immediately after the destruction of the Athenian 
army in Sicily, Persian satraps appeared again upon the Aegean 
coast. Sparta at once bought the aid of their gold by betraying 
the freedom of the Asiatic Greeks, — to whom the Athenian 
name had been a shield for seventy years. Persian funds then 
built fleet after fleet for Sparta ; and slowly Athens was ex- 
hausted, despite some brilliant victories. 



In 405, the last Athenian fleet was surprised and captured at 
Aegospotami (Goat Rivers). Apparently the officers had been 
plotting again for an oligarchic revolution; and the sailors had 
been discouraged and demoralized, even if they were not actually 
betrayed by their commanders. Lysander, the Spartan com- 
mander, in cold blood put to death the four thousand Athenian 
citizens among the captives. 

This slaughter marks the end. Athens still held out, despair- 
ing but stubborn, until starved into submission by a terrible 
siege. In 404, the proud city surrendered to the mercy of its 
foes. Corinth and Thebes wished to raze it from the earth, 
but Sparta had no mind to do away with so useful a check upon 



THE FALL OF ATHENS 201 

those cities. She compelled Athens to renounce all claims to 
empire, to give up all alliances, to surrender all her ships but 
twelve, and to promise to "follow Sparta" in peace and war. 
The Long Walls and the defenses of the Piraeus were demol- 
ished, to the music of Peloponnesian flutes ; and Hellas was 
declared free ! It remained only to see to what foreign master 
Greece should fall. 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, 
I, Nos. 81-86 (16 pages), gives the most striking episodes of the war, 
as they were told by the Athenian historians of the day, Thucydides 
and Xenophon. Plutarch's Lives ("Alcibiades," "Nicias," and "Ly- 
sander") is the next most valuable authority. 

The following modern authorities continue to be useful: Bury, 
chs. X, xi ; the closing parts of Grant's Age of Pericles and of Abbott's 
Pericles; and Cox's Athenian Empire. Bury gives 120 pages to the 
struggle, — too long an account for required class reading, but useful 
for special topics. 

Exercises, upon some of the following : (1) Cleon's leadership. 

(2) The trial of the Athenian generals after the victory of Arginusae. 

(3) The massacre of the Mytilenean oligarchs (story of the decree and 
the reprieve). (4) Massacre of the Melians by Athens, 415 B.C. 
(5) Note the merciless nature of the struggle, as shown by other massa- 
cres of prisoners : i.e., Thebans by Plataeans, 431 b. c ; Plataeans by 
Thebans, 427 b.c. ; thousands of Athenians in the mines of Syracuse ; 
the four thousand Athenians after Aegospotami. (6) The career of 
Alcibiades. (7) Superiority of Athens in naval tactics — as illus- 
trated by many victories over larger fleets. 



CHAPTER XVII 



FROM THE FALL OF ATHENS TO THE FALL OF HELLAS 



Rules of 
decarchies 



Spartan 
decay 



404-338 B.C. 
I. SPARTAN SUPREMACY, 404-371 b.c. 

The cities of the old Athenian empire found that they had 
exchanged a mild, wise rule for a coarse and stupid despotism. 
Their old tribute was doubled ; their self-government was taken 
away ; bloodshed and confusion ran riot in their streets. 

Everywhere Sparta set up oligarchic governments. Usually 
the management of a city was given to a board of ten men, 
called a decarchy ("rule of ten"). To defend these narrow 
oligarchies against democratic risings, there was placed in many 
cities a Spartan garrison, with a Spartan military governor. 
The garrisons plundered at will ; the governors grew rich from 
extortion and bribes ; the decarchies were slavishly subservient 
to their Spartan masters, while they wreaked upon their fellow- 
citizens a long pent-up aristocratic vengeance, in confiscation, 
outrage, expulsion, assassination, and massacre. 

In Sparta itself luxury and corruption replaced the old sim- 
plicity. Property was gathered into the hands of a few, while 
many Spartans grew too poor to support themselves at the 
public mess (p. 128). These poorer men ceased to be looked 
upon as citizens. They were not permitted to vote in the 
Assembly, and were known as " Inferiors." The 10,000 citizens, 
of the Persian War period, shrank to 2000. 



The Thirty 
at Athens 



For a time even Athens remained a victim to Spartan tyranny, 
like any petty Ionian city. After the surrender, in 404, Lysander 
appointed a committee of thirty from the oligarchic clubs of 
Athens "to reestablish the constitution of the fathers." This 

202 



SPARTAN SUPREMACY 203 

committee was expected to undo the reforms of Pericles and 
Clisthenes and Solon, and to restore the ancient oligarchy. 
In actual fact they did worse than that : they published no 
constitution at all, but instead they filled all offices with their 
own followers and plotted to make their rule permanent. 

These men (a triple decarchy) were known as "the Thirty 
Tyrants." They called in a Spartan garrison, to whom they 
gave the fortress of the Acropolis. They disarmed the citizens, 
except some three thousand of their own adherents. Then they 
began a bloody and greedy reign of terror. Rich democrats 
and alien merchants were put to death or driven into exile, 
in order that their property might be confiscated. (Davis' 
Readings, I, No. 100.) Despite the orders of Sparta, such 
exiles and other democratic fugitives were sheltered by Thebes. 
That city felt aggrieved that her services in the Peloponnesian 
War had received no reward from Sparta, and now she would 
have been glad to see Athens more powerful again. A year 
later, a daring band of these Athenian exiles marched secretly 
from Thebes by night and seized the Piraeus. The aliens of 
the harbor rose in their support, and they defeated the Spartan 
garrison and the forces of the Thirty. 

The restored democracy showed itself generous as well as Athenian 

moderate. A few of the most guiltv of the Thirty were pun- <iemocracy 

, restored 
ished, but for all others a general amnesty was declared. This 

moderation contrasted so favorably with the cut-throat rule of 

the recent Athenian experiments at oligarchy, that Athens was 

undisturbed in future by revolution. 

Meantime, important events were taking place in the East. March of 
In 401, the weakness of the Persian empire was shown strikingly. 2if ^^^ , 
Cyrus the Younger, brother of the king Artaxerxes, endeavored 
to seize the Persian throne. While a satrap in Asia Minor, Cyrus 
had furnished Sparta the money to keep her fleet together before 
the battle of Goat Rivers ; and now, through Sparta's favor, he 
was able to enlist ten thousand Greeks in his army. 

Cyrus penetrated to the heart of the Persian Empire ; but in 
a great battle near Babylon, he was killed, and his Asiatic troops 



204 



THE GREEKS 



routed. The Ten Thousand Greeks, however, proved un- 
conquerable by the Persian host of half a million. By treachery 
the Greek commanders were entrapped and murdered ; but, 
under the inspiration of Xenophon the Athenian (pp. 52, 174), 
the Ten Thousand chose new generals and made a remarkable 
retreat to the Greek districts on the Black Sea. 

Until this time the Greeks had waged their contests with Persia 
only along the coasts of Asia. After the Ten Thousand had 
marched, almost at will, through so many hostile nations, the 
Greeks began to dream of conquering the Asiatic continent. In 
396, Agesilaus, king of Sparta, invaded Asia Minor with a large 
army ; but no sooner was Sparta engaged with Persia than 
enemies rose up in Greece itself. Thebes, Corinth, Athens, 
and Argos formed an alliance against her, and shattered her 
empire in Europe. 

After a few years of indecisive war, Sparta sought peace with 
Persia. In 387 the two powers invited all the Greek states to 
send deputies to Sardis, where the Persian king dictated the terms. 
The document read — 

"King Artaxerxes deems it just that the cities in Asia, with the islands 
of Clazomenae and Cyprus, should belong to himself. The rest of the Hel- 
lenic cities, both great and small, he will leave independent, save 
Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which three are to belong to Athens as of 
yore. Should any of the parties not accept this peace, I, Artaxerxes, 
together with those who share my views [the Spartans], will war against 
the offenders by land and sea." 

Persia and Sparta held that these terms dissolved all the other 
leagues (like the Boeotian, of which Thebes was the head), but 
that they did not affect Sparta's control over Laconia, or 
weaken the Peloponnesian confederacy. 

Thv^ Persia and Sparta again conspired to betray Hellas. 
Persia helped Sparta to keep the European Greeks divided 
and weak ; and Sparta helped Persia recover her olji rule over 
the Asiatic Greeks. The enemies of Sparta had just before 
been using Persian aid against her ; but the policy had been first 
introduced by Sparta in seeking Persian help against Athens 



SPARTAN SUPREMACY 



205 



(p. 200) ; and so far no other Greek state had offered to surrender 
Hellenic cities to barbarians as the price of such aid. 

Sparta had saved her power by infamy. She used it, with 
the same brutal cunning as in the past, to keep down the 
beginnings of greatness elsewhere in Greece. iVrcadia had shown 
signs of growing strength ; but Sparta now broke up the leading 
city, Mantinea, and dispersed the inhabitants in villages. In 
Chalcidice, the city " of 
Olynthus had organized its 
neighbors into a promising 
league. A Spartan army 
compelled this league to 
break up. While on the 
way to Chalcidice, part of 
this army, by treachery, in 
time of peace, seized the 
citadel of Thebes. And, 
when the Athenian naval 
power began to revive, 
a like treacherous, though 
unsuccessful, attempt was 
made upon the Piraeus. 

But soon there came a 
revolution at Thebes. The 
Spartan garrison there had 
set up an oligarchic The- 
ban government, which 
had driven crowds of citi- 
zens into exile. Athens received them, just as Thebes had shel- 
tered Athenian fugitives in the time of the Thirty Tyrants. In 
379, a number of daring young men among the exiles returned 
secretly to Thebes, and, through the aid of friends there, were 
admitted (disguised as dancing girls) to a banquet where the 
Theban oligarchs were already deep in wine. They killed the 
drunken traitors with their daggers. Then, running through 
the streets, they called the people to expel the Spartans from 



Sparta's 

brutal 

jealousy 




The Disc Thrower. — After Myron. 
Now in the Vatican. 



206 



THE GREEKS 



the citadel. Thebes became a democracy ; and Thebes and Athens 
joined in a new war upon Sparta. 

In 371 B.C., the contending parties, wearied with fruitless 
strife, concluded peace. But when the treaty was being 
signed, Epaminondas, the Theban representative, demanded the 
right to sign for all Boeotia, as Sparta had signed for all Laconia. 
Athens would not support Thebes in this position. So Thebes 
was excluded from the peace, and Sparta turned to crush her. 

A powerful Spartan 
army at once invaded 



Boeotia — and met with 
an overwhelming defeat 
by a smaller Theban force 
at Leuctra. This amazing 
result was due to the mili- 
tary genius of Epami- 
nondas. Hitherto the 
Greeks had fought in long 
lines, from eight to twelve 
men deep. Epaminondas 
massed his best troops in a solid column, fifty men deep, on the 
left, opposite the Spartan wing in the Peloponnesian army. His 
other troops were spread out as thin as possible. The solid 
phalanx was set in motion first ; then the thinner center and 
right wing advanced more slowly so as to engage the attention of 
the enemy opposite, but not to come into action. The weight 
of the massed Theban charge crushed through the Spartan line, 
and trampled it under. Four hundred of the seven hundred 
Spartans, with their king and with a thousand other Pelopon- 
nesian hoplites, went down in ten minutes. 

The mere loss of men was fatal enough, now that Spartan 
citizenship was so reduced (the number of full citizens after 
this battle did not exceed fifteen hundred) ; but the effect upon 
the military prestige of Sparta was even more deadly. At one 
stroke Sparta sank into a second-rate power; but she met her 
fate with heroic composure. The news of the overthrow did 




THEBAN SUPREMACY 207 

not interfere with a festival that was going on in Sparta, and 
only the relatives of the survivors of the battle appeared in 
mourning. 

II. THEBAN SUPREMACY 

For a brief time after Leuctra, Thebes was the head of Greece, Leadership 

and Epaminondas was the head of Thebes, much as Pericles °^ Epami- 

. nondas 

had been of Athens. Epaminondas was great as general, states- 
man, and philosopher, and greatest as a man, lofty and lovable 
in nature. In his earlier days he had been looked upon as a 
dreamer; and when the oligarchs of Thebes drove out "active" 
patriots they only sneered while Epaminondas continued calmly 
to talk of liberty to the young. Later, it was recognized that, 
more than any other man, he had prepared the way for a free 
democracy. Unhappily, the few years remaining of his life 
Epaminondas was compelled to give mainly to war. Laconia was 
repeatedly invaded. During these campaigns, on one side of 
Sparta, Epaminondas freed Messenia — which for two centuries 
had been a mere district of Laconia — and on the other side, or- 
ganized Arcadia into a federal union, so as to " surround Sparta 
with a perpetual blockade." The great Theban aided the Mes- 
senians to found a new capital, Messene, and in Arcadia he 
restored Mantinea. In this district he also founded Megalopolis, 
"the Great City," by combining forty scattered villages. 

The leadership of Thebes, however, rested solely on the Death of 
supreme genius of her one statesman. In 362, for the fourth ^q^^s 
time, Epaminondas marched against Sparta, and at Mantinea and fall of 
won another complete victory. The Spartans had been unable ^ ^^ 
to learn ; and went down again before the same tactics that had 
crushed them nine years earlier at Leuctra. Mantinea was the 
greatest land battle ever fought between Hellenes; but the 
victory bore no fruit, for Epaminondas fell on the field, and 
his city sank at once to a slow and narrow policy. 

The failure of the Greek cities to unite into larger states 
made it certain that sooner or later they must fall to some 
outside power. Sparta and Thebes (with Persian aid) had 



208 



THE GREEKS 



been able to prevent Athenian leadership ; Thebes and 
Athens had overthrown Sparta ; Sparta and Athens had 
been able to check Thebes. Twenty years of anarchy 
followed ; and then Greece fell to a foreign master. 

From the Persian wars to the coming Macedonian con- 
quest, Greek life had lasted only a century and a half. The 
first half of this short period was the glorious age of Athe- 
nian leadership ; the second half was an age of Spartan 
shame and of profitless wars. 

For Further Reading. — Davis' Readings, I, Nos. 100 (the 
"Thirty Tyrants"), 101 (Epaminondas) , and 102 (Leuctra). Plu- 
tarch's Lives ("Agesilaus" and "Pelopidas"). 



III. THE MACEDONIAN CONQUEST 

Until some years after Leuctra, the Macedonians (part of 
the outer rim of the Greek race) had been only a loose union of 
barbarous tribes. Forty years later, Alexander the Great 
could say to them : — 

"My father, PhiUp, found you a roving, destitute people, without 
fixed homes and without resources, most of you clad in the skins of 
animals, pasturing a few sheep among the mountains. . . . He gave 
you the soldier's cloak to replace the skins, and led you down from the 
mountains into the plain. . . . He made you to dwell in cities, and 
provided you with wholesome laws and institutions. Over those same 
barbarians, who before had plundered you and carried off as booty 
both yourselves and your substance, he made you masters and lords." 

This Philip II of Macedon was ambitious, crafty, sagacious, 
persistent, unscrupulous, an unfailing judge of character, and a 
marvelous organizer. He had made his people a nation, and he 
set himself to make them true Greeks by making them the leaders 
of Greece. 

At his accession Macedon was a poor country without a 
good harbor. The first need was an outlet on the sea. Philip 
found one by conquering the Chalcidic peninsula. Then his 
energy developed the gold mines of that district until they 



CONQUEST BY MACEDONIA 



209 



furnished him a yearly revenue of a thousand talents — as 
large as that of Athens at her greatest power. 

After other conquests at the expense of barbarous neighbors 
(map below), Philip turned to Greece itself. Here he used 
an adroit mingling of cunning, bribery, and force. In all Greek 




states, among the pretended patriot statesmen, there were 
secret servants in his pay. He set city against city ; and the 
constant tendency to quarrels among the Greeks played into his 
hands. 

Philip's wealth made it possible for him to keep a disciplined The phalanx 
army ready for use. This army was as superior to the two- 
months citizen armies of Hellas as his secret and persistent 



210 



THE GREEKS 



"diplomacy" was more cunning and effective than the changing 
counsels and open plans of a pubhc assembly. During a stay 
at Thebes while a boy, Philip had become familiar with the 
Theban phalanx. He now enlarged and improved it, so that the 
ranks presented five rows of bristling spears projecting beyond 
the front soldier. The flanks were protected by light-armed 

troops, and the Mace- 
donian nobles furnished 
the finest of cavalry. 

At the same time a field 
"artillery" first appears, 
made up of curious engines 
able to throw darts and 
great stones three hundred 
yards. Such a mixture of 
trained troops, on a perma- 
nent footing, was altogether 
novel. Philip created the 
instrument with which his 
son was to conquer the 
world. 

The only man who saw clearly the designs of Philip, and 
constantly opposed them, was Demosthenes the Athenian. 
Demosthenes was the greatest orator of Greece (p. 174). To 
check Macedonia became the one aim of his life ; and the last 
glow of Greek independence flames up in his passionate appeals 
to Athens that she defend Hellas against Macedon as she had 
once done against Persia. " Suppose," he cried, " that you have 
one of the gods as surety that Philip will leave you untouched, 
in the name of all the gods, it is a shame for you in ignorant 
stupidity to sacrifice the rest of Hellas ! " But the noble 
orations (the Philippics) by which Demosthenes sought to 
move the Athenian assembly to action against Philip, though un- 
rivaled in oratory, had little practical effect. 

In 338 B.C. Philip threw off the mask and invaded Greece. 
Athens and Thebes combined against him, — to be hopelessly 




Philip II of Macedon. — A gold 
medallion by Alexander. 



CONQUEST BY MACEDONIA 211 

crushed at the battle of Chaeronea. Then a congress of Greek Philip's 
states at Corinth recognized Macedonia as the head of Greece. ^^^^^^ ° 
It was agreed that the separate states should keep their local 
self-government, but that foreign matters, including war and 
peace, should be committed to Philip. Philip was also declared 
general in chief of the armies of Greece for a war against Persia. 

Philip posed, wisely, not as the conqueror, but as the cham- 
pion of Greece. None the less, the history of Hellas had closed. 

Exercise. — Note the three elements in Philip's preparation to attack 
Hellas, — and compare them with Germany's preparations before 

1914 A.D. 



PART III — THE GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 

The seed-ground of European civilization is neither .Greece nor the 
Orient, but a world joined of the two. — Benjamin Ide Wheeler. 



CHAPTER XVni 



ALEXANDER JOINS EAST AND WEST 

Philip of Macedon was assassinated in 336, two years after 
Chaeronea. He was just ready to. begin the invasion of Asia ; 
and his work was taken up by his son Alexander. As a boy, 
Alexander had been fearless and self-willed, with fervent affec- 
tions.^ He was devoted to Homer, and he knew the Iliad by 
heart. Homer's Achilles he claimed for an ancestor and took 
for his ideal. His later education was directed by Aristotle 
(p. 231), and from this great teacher he learned to admire Greek 
art and culture. 

At his father's death Alexander was a stripling of twenty years. 
He was to prove a rare military genius. He never lost a battle 
and never refused an engagement, and he could be shrewd and 
adroit in diplomacy; but at this time he was known only as 
a rash boy. Revolt broke out everywhere; but the young king 
showed himself at once both statesman and general. With 
marvelous rapidity he struck crushing blows on this side and on 
that. A hurried expedition restored order in Greece ; the savage 
tribes of the north were quieted by a rapid march beyond the 
Danube; then, turning on rebellious Illyria, Alexander forced 
the mountain passes and overran the country. 

In the south, meantime, it was rumored that he was slain 
among the barbarians, and insurrection again blazed forth. 
But, with forced marches, he hastened back once more into 

1 Special report ; anecdotes from Plutarch regarding Alexander. 
212 



ALEXANDER "THE GREAT" 213 

Greece, and fell with swift and terrible vengeance upon Thebes, 
the center of the rising. The city was sacked and leveled with 
the ground, except the house of Pindar (p. 112), and the miser- 
able thirty thousand survivors of the population were sold as 
slaves. Then, with his authority firmly reestablished, Alexander 
turned to attack Persia. 

In 334 B.C., Alexander crossed the Hellespont with 35,000 Conquest 
troops, an army quite enough to scatter any Oriental force, and p . 
as large as any general could handle well in that day on long Empire 
marches in a hostile country. The route of march can best be 
traced on the map (after p. 214). The conquest of the empire 
took five years, and the story falls into three parts, each marked 
by a famous battle. 

1 . The Persian satraps of Asia Minor met the invaders at Asia Minor : 
the GraniciLS, a small stream in ancient Troyland. Alexander ^^ . 
himself led the Macedonian charge through the river and up 

the steep bank into the midst of the Persian cavalry, where he 
barely escaped death. The Persian nobles fought, as always, 
with gallant self-devotion, but in the end they were utterly 
routed. The victory cost Alexander only 120 men, and it 
made him master of all Asia Minor. 

2. To strike at the heart of the empire at once would have Syria: 
been to leave behind him a large Persian fleet, to encourage ^^sus 
revolt in Greece. Alexander wisely determined to secure the 
entire coast, and so make safe his "line of communication" 

with Europe. Accordingly he turned south, to reduce Phoenicia 
and Egypt. Meantime the Persians had gathered a great 
army ; but at Issus Alexander easily overthrew their host of six 
hundred thousand men led by King Darius in person. Darius 
allowed himself to be caught in a narrow defile between the 
mountains and the sea. The cramped space made the vast 
numbers of the Persians an embarrassment to themselves. 
They soon became a huddled mob of fugitives, and the Mace- 
donians wearied themselves with slaughter. 

Alexander now assumed the title, King of Persia. The siege 
of Tyre (p. 76) detained him a year ; but Egypt welcomed him 



214 



GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



as a deliverer, and by the close of 332, all the sea power of the 
Eastern Mediterranean was his. While in Egypt he showed his 
constructive genius by founding Alexandria at the mouth of 
the Nile — a city destined to be for many centuries a commercial 
and intellectual center for the world, where before there had 
been only a haunt of pirates. 

3. Darius now proposed that he and Alexander should share 
the empire between them, with the Euphrates for the dividing 
line. Rejecting this offer contemptuously, Alexander took up 
his march for the interior. Following the ancient route from 
Egypt to Assyria (p. 42), he met Darius near Arbela, not far from 
ancient Nineveh. The Persians are said to have numbered a 
million men. Alexander purposely allowed them choice of time 
and place, and by a third decisive victory proved the hopelessness 
of their resistance. Darius never gathered another army. The 
capitals of the empire — Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis 
— surrendered, with enormous treasure in gold and silver, and 
the Persian Empire had fallen (331 B.C.). 

The next six years went, however, to much more desperate 
warfare in the eastern mountain regions, and in India. Alexan- 
der carried his arms as far east from Babylon as Babylon was 
from Macedonia. He traversed great deserts ; subdued the 
warlike and princely chiefs of Bactria and Sogdiana up to the 
steppes of the wild Tartar tribes beyond the Oxus ; twice forced 
the passes of the Hindukush; conquered the valiant moun-^. 
taineers of what is now Afghanistan; and led his army into 
the fertile and populous plains of northern India. He crossed 
the Indus, won realms beyond the ancient Persian province 
of the Punjab, and planned still more distant empires; but on 
the banks of the Hyphasis River his faithful Macedonians re- 
fused to be led farther, to waste away in inhuman perils; 
and the chagrined conqueror was compelled to return to 
Babylon. This city he made his capital, and here he died of a 
fever two years later (323 B.C.) at the age of thirty-two, in 
the midst of preparations to extend his conquests both east 
and west. 



FUSION OF EAST AND WEST 215 



Alexander began his conquest to avenge the West upon the Merging of 

East a 
West 



East. But he came to see excellent and noble quahties in ^^* 



Oriental life, and he rose to a broader view. He aimed no longer 
to hold the Persian world in subjection to little Greece, but rather 
to mold Persian and Greek into one people on terms of equality, — 
to fuse the East and the West into a new civilization. Persian 
youths were trained by thousands in Macedonian fashion to re- 
place the veterans of Alexander's army ; Persian nobles were wel- 
comed at court and given high offices ; and the government of 
Asia was intrusted largely to Asiatics, on a system similar to 
that of Darius the Great (p. 69). Alexander himself adopted 
Persian manners and customs, and he bribed and coaxed and 
forced his officers and soldiers to do the hke. 

At the same time Alexander saw that to fulfill this mission he 
must open the East to Greek ideas. The races might mingle 
their blood ; the Greek might learn much from the Orient, and 
in the end be absorbed by it ; hut the thought and art of little 
Hellas, with its active energy, must leaven the vast passive mass of 
the East. 

One great measure, for this end, was the founding of chains The many 
of cities, to bind the conquests together and to become the Alexandrias 
homes of Hellenic influence. Alexander himself built seventy 
of these towns (usually called from his name, like the Alex- 
andria in Egypt). Their walls sprang up under the pick and 
spade of the soldiery along the lines of march. One great 
city, we are told, walls and houses, was completed in twenty 
days. Sometimes these places were mere garrison towns on dis- 
tant frontiers, but oftener they became mighty emporiums at the 
intersection of great lines of trade. There was an Alexandria 
on the Jaxartes, on the Indus, on the Euphrates, as well as on 
the Nile. Many of these cities remain great capitals to this 
day, like Herat and Kandahar. (Iskandar, or Kandahar, is an 
Oriental form of the Greek name Alexander.) 

This building of Greek cities was continued by Alexander's 
successors. Once more, and on a vaster scale than ever before, 
the Greek genius for colonization found vent. Each new city 



216 



GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



had a Greek nucleus. At first this consisted mainly of worn-out 
veterans, left behind as a garrison; but adventurous youth, 
emigrating from old Hellas to win fortune, continued to rein- 
force the Greek element. The native village people roundabout 
were gathered in to make the bulk of the inhabitants ; and these 
also soon took on Greek character. From scattered, ignorant 
rustics, they became artisans and merchants, devotedly attached 
to Greek rule and zealous disciples of Greek culture. 

These cities were well paved. They had ample provision for 
lighting by night, a good water supply, and police protection. 
Even in that despotic East, they enjoyed a large amount of 




Alexander. Alexander in a Lion-hunt. 

The two sides of a gold medallion struck by Alexander at Tarsus. 

self-government : they met in their own assemblies, managed 
their own courts, and collected their own taxes. For centuries 
they made the backbone of Hellenism throughout the world. 
Greek was the ordinary speech of their streets ; Greek archi- 
tecture built their temples, and Greek sculpture adorned them ; 
they celebrated Greek games and festivals. No longer in little 
Hellas alone, but over the whole East, in Greek theaters, vast 
audiences were educated by the plays of Euripides. The culture 
developed by a small people became the heritage of a vast 
Graeco-Oriental world. 

The victorious Hellenic civilization was modified by its 



A NEW CIVILIZATION 217 

victory, even in its old home. Sympathies were broadened. Reaction of 
The barrier between Greek and barbarian faded away! ^^^^ ^ ., 

Wealth teas enormomly augmented in the West. The vast ^ ... 
treasure of gold and silver which Oriental monarchs had hoarded augmented 
in secret vaults was thrown again into circulation, and large sums 
were brought back to Europe by returning adventurers. These 
adventurers brought back also a new taste for Oriental luxuries. 
This stimvdated trade and encouraged a higher standard of 
living. Manifold new comforts and enjoyments adorned and 
enriched life. 

A new era of scientific •progress began. Alexander himself had Science 
the zeal of an explorer. When he first touched the Indus, he 
thought it the upper course of the Nile ; but he built a great 
fleet of two thousand vessels, sailed down the river to the Indian 
Ocean, and then sent his friend Nearchus to explore that sea 
and to trace the coast to the mouth of the Euphrates. After a 
voyage of many months, Nearchus reached Babylon. He had 
mapped the coast line, made frequent landings, and collected a 
mass of observations and a multitude of strange plants and 
animals. This expedition was more important for its day than 
the famous scientific exploration by Lewis and Clark, from the 
Missouri to the Pacific, was in its day. At other times, scientific 
collections were made by Alexander, to be sent to his old in- 
structor Aristotle, who embodied the results of his study upon 
them in a Natural History of fifty volumes. 

Thus the mingling of East and West gave a product different 
from either of the old factors. Alexander's victories enlarged 
the map of the world once more, and made these vaster "spaces 
the home of a higher culture. They grafted the new West upon 
the old East, — a graft from which sprang the plant of our later 
civilization. 

For Further Reading. — -Davis' Readings, 1, Nos. 108-118, and 
Wheeler's Alexander the Great. 




Public Buildings of Pergamos, a Greek city of Asia, as "restored" by 
Thiersch. The city lay lower down, upon the plain. 



CHAPTER XIX 

STORY OP THE HELLENISTIC "WORLD, 323-220 B. C. 

Alexander left no heir old enough to succeed him. On his 
deathbed, asked to whom he would leave his throne, he replied 
grimly, "To the strongest." As he foresaw, at his death his 
leading generals instantly began to strive with one another for 
his realm ; and for half a century the history of the civilized 
world was a horrible welter of war and assassination — the 
"Wars of the Succession." 

About 280 B.C., something like a fixed order emerged. Then 
followed a period of sixty years, known as the Glory of Hellenism. 
The Hellenistic ^ world reached from the Adriatic to the Indus, 
and consisted of: (1) three great kingdoms, Syria, Egypt, and 
Macedonia; (2) a broken chain of smaller monarchies scattered 
from Media to Epirus (some of them, like Pontics and Armenia, 
under dynasties descended from Persian princes) ; and (3) 
many single free cities like Byzantium and Rhodes. 



1 Hellenic refers to the old Hellas ; Hellenistic, to the wider world, of 
mixed Hellenic and Oriental character, after Alexander. 

218 



INVASION BY THE GAULS 



219 



Politically in many ways all the vast district bore a striking 
resemblance to modern Europe. There was a like division into 
great and small states, ruled by dynasties related by inter- 
marriages ; there was a common civilization, and a recognition 
of common interests as against outside barbarism ; and there 
were jealousies and conflicts similar to those in Europe in recent 
centuries. There were shifting alliances, and many greedy 
wars to preserve "the 
balance of power" or to 
secure trade advantages. 
There was a likeness to 
modern society, too, as we 
shall see more fully later, 
in the refinement of the 
age, in its excellences and 
its vices, the great learn- 
ing, the increase in skill 
and in criticism, and, 
toward the close, in social- 
istic agitation among hun- 
gry sullen mobs against the 
ostentatious and wasteful 
wealth that jostled them 
in the cities. 

The history of the third 
century is a history of 
many separate countries, 
but there was one event of 
general interest. This was 
the great GalHc invasion of 278 b.c. It was the first formidable 
barbarian attack upon the Eastern world since the Scythians 
had been chastised by the early Persian kings (p. 68). A 
century before, hordes of these same Gauls had devastated 
northern Italy and sacked the rising city of Rome. Now 
they poured into exhausted Macedonia, penetrated into Greece 
as far as Delphi, and carried havoc even into Asia. For a long 




The Apollo Belvidere, — representing 
the god defending his temple at Delphi 
from a raid of Gauls by his thunderbolt. 
The statue commemorates a raid which 
in some way was repulsed in disorder. 



Invasion 
by the 
Gauls 



220 



GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



period every great sovereign of the Hellenic world turned his 
arms upon them, until they were finally settled as peaceful 
colonists in a region of Asia Minor, which took the name Galatia 
from these new inhabitants. 

The largest of the great monarchies was Syria. For long, it 
comprised most of ^Alexander's empire in Asia, except for a few 
small states in Asia Minor. In the Wars of the Succession it 




The Dying Gaul. — The Hellenic patriotism aroused by the repulse of 
the Gauls, like that in little Hellas two hundred years before by the 
repulse of the Persians, played a part in a splendid outburst of art and 
literature that followed. See also p. 219. 

fell to Seleucus. His descendants (Seleucidae) excelled all other 
successors of Alexander in building cities and extending Greek 
civilization over barbarous regions. Seleucus himself founded 
seventy-five cities. 

Egypt now included Cyprus, and possessed a vague control 
over many coast towns of Asia Minor. Immediately upon 
Alexander's death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, chose Egypt 
for his province. His descendants, all known as Ptolemies, 
ruled the land until the Roman conquest. 



THE PTOLEMIES IN EGYPT 



221 



The early Ptolemies were wise, energetic rulers. Ptolemy I 
established a great naval power, improved harbors, and built 





-/'-. 



Pylon of Ptolemy III at Karnak. — The reliefs represent that mon- 
arch (a famous conqueror) in religious thanksgiving, sacrificing, praying, 
offering trophies to the gods. At the top is a "conventionalized " winged 
sundisk, a common feature in Egyptian art. Note the general likeness 
to the older Egyptian architecture. 



the first lighthouse. Ptolemy II (better known as Ptolemy 
Philadelphu^) restored the old canal from the Red Sea to the 
Nile (pp. 31, 70), constructed roads, and fostered learning more 



222 GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 

than any great ruler before him. Many of the later Ptolemies 
were weaklings or infamous monsters. 

One other state of this period is of such interest to the Amer- 
ican student that it is given a separate chapter. This state is 
the Achaean League, the most important ancient experiment in 
federal government. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE 

During the ruinous Wars of the Succession, Greece had been Greece a 
a favorite battleground for the great powers, Egypt, Syria, and dependency 
Macedonia. Many cities were laid waste ; the people were sunk 
in misery ; and at the close of the contests, the country was 
left a vassal of Macedonia. To make her hold firmer, Macedonia 
set up tyrants in many cities. From this humiliation, Greece 
was lifted for a time by the Achaean League — the most remark- 
able federal union in history before the foundation of the United 
States of America. 

There was a rude federation in Achaea as early as the Persian The 
War, but it had little influence on other parts of Greece. Under ^^^^^^^ 
Macedonian rule, the league was destroyed and tyrants were frees 
set up in several of the ten Achaean cities. But, about 280 ^^'^^^^ 
B.C., four small towns revived the ancient confederacy. This 
union swiftly drove out the tyrants from the neighboring towns, 
and absorbed all Achaea. 

So far Macedonia had not interfered. The Gallic invasion 
just at this time had spread ruin over all the north of Hellas, 
and probably prevented hostile action by the Macedonian king. 

The chief authority of the league ' was placed in a Federal Govem- 
Assembly. This was not a representative body, but a mass !^^\° 
meeting of all citizens of the league who chose to attend. To 
prevent the city where the meeting was held from outweighing 
the others, each city was given only one vote.^ That is, ten 
or twelve men — or even one man — from a distant town cast 
the vote of that city, and counted as much as several hundred 

' This principle was practically universal among all federations until 
the adoption of the present constitution by our country. The one ex- 
ception was the Lycian Confederacy in Asia Minor. This union was ab- 
sorbed by Rome in 54 a.d., before it played an important part in history. In 

223 



224 



GRAECO-ORIBNTAL WORLD 



from a city nearer the place of meeting. The Assembly was 
held twice a year, for only three days at a time, and in some small 
city, so that a great capital should not overshadow the rest of 
the league. It chose yearly a Council of Ten, a Senate, and a 
General (or president), with various minor officers. The same 

General could not be 
chosen two years in 
succession. 

This government 
raised federal taxes and 
armies, and managed 
all foreign relations. 
Each city remained a 
distinct state, with full 
control over all its in- 
ternal matters — but no 
city of itself could make 
peace or war, enter into 
alliances, or send am- 
bassadors to another 
state. The Achaean 
League was a true fed- 
eration, and not a mere 
alUance. Its cities cor- 
responded to the Amer- 
ican States under our old Articles of Confederation. 

In theory, this constitution was extremely democratic : in 
practice, it proved otherwise. Men attended the Assembly at 
their own expense. Any Achaean might come, but only the 

its Assembly, the vote was taken by cities, but the cities were divided into 
three classes: the largest had three votes each, the next class two each, and the 
smallest only one. In the Philadelphia Convention, in 1787, several American 
statesmen wished to adopt this Lycian plan for our States in the Federal 
Congress. 

1 The Aetolians were rude and warlike mountaineers, who came into 
prominence as soldiers of fortune during the wars of Alexander's suc- 
cessors. The ancient league was originally a loose union for mutual pro- 
tection. After this time it became sometimes eager for plunder. 




THE ACHAEAN AND AETOLIANiLEAGUES, 
ABOUT 225 B.C. 



THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE 225 

wealthy could afford to do so, as a regular thing. Moreover, since 
the meetings of the Assembly were few and brief, great authority 
had to be left to the General and Council. Any Achaean was 
eligible to these offices, but poor men could hardly afford to take 
them, because they had no salaries. The Greek system of a primary 
assembly toas suited only to single cities. A primary assembly 
made the city of Athens a perfect democracy : the same institution 
made the Achaean League highly aristocratic. 

The most remarkable of the leaders of the league was Aratus and 
Aratus ^ of Sicyon. Sicyon was a city just outside Achaea, to of^^he" 
the east. It had been ruled by a vile and bloody tyrant, who League 
drove many leading citizens into exile. Among these exiles 
was the family of Aratus. When a youth of twenty years 
(251 B.C.), Aratus planned, by a night attack, to overthrow 
the tyrant and free his native city. The daring venture was 
brilliantly successful ; but it aroused the hatred of Macedon, 
and, to preserve the freedom so nobly won, Aratus brought 
Sicyon into the Achaean federation. 

Five years later, Aratus was elected General of the league, 
and thereafter he held that office each alternate year (as often 
as the constitution permitted) until his death, thirty-two years 
later. In his second generalship, Aratus freed Corinth from her 
Macedonian tyrant by a desperate night attack upon the garrison 
of the citadel. That powerful city then entered the union. So 
did Megara, which itself drove out its Macedonian garrison. 
The league now commanded the Isthmus, and was safe from 
attack by Macedonia. 

Aratus hated tyrants, and longed for a free and united Greece. 
He extended the league far beyond the borders of Achaea, and 
made it a champion of Hellenic freedom. He aimed at a noble 
end, but did not refuse base means. He was incorruptible 
himself, and he lavished his vast wealth on the union ; but he 

1 The first statesman known to us from his own memoirs — which Plutarch 
drew upon for his Life of Aratus. What earUer source of historical in- 
formation does this new source most resemble? In what respect should 
such a source be used cautiously? 



226 



GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



was bitterly jealous of other leaders. With plenty of daring 
in a dashing project, as he many times proved, he lacked nerve 
to command in battle, and he never won a real victory in the 
field. Still, despite his many defeats, his persuasive power and 
his merits kept him the confidence of the union to the end of a 
long public life. 

In 234, Megalopolis (p. 207), then a leading city of Greece, was 
taken into the league. Some years earlier the government of 
Megalopolis had become a tyranny. Lydiadas, a gallant and 
enthusiastic youth, seized despotic power, meaning to use it 
for good ends. The growth of the Achaean League opened a 
nobler way : Lydiadas resigned his tyranny, and as a private 
citizen brought the Great City into the union. This act made 
him a popular hero, and Aratus became his bitter foe. The new 
leader was the more lovable figure, — generous and ardent, a 
soldier as well as a statesman. Several times he became 
General of the league, but even in office he was often thwarted 
by the disgraceful trickery of the older man. Finally, in battle 
with Sparta, while leading a gallant charge, Lydiadas was over- 
powered by numbers, while Aratus, calmly looking on, refused 
to let the Achaean phalanx advance to save him. 

The league now was the commanding power in Hellas. It 
included all Peloponnesus except Sparta and Elis. Moreover, 
all Greece south of Thermopylae had become free, — largely 
through the influence of the Achaean league, — and most of 
the states not inside the union had at least entered into friendly 
alliance with it. 

But now came a fatal conflict with Sparta. This struggle was 
connected with a great reform within that ancient city. The 
forms of the ancient constitution had survived through many 
centuries, but now Sparta had only seven hundred full citizens 
(cf. pp. 202, 206). This condition brought about a violent 
agitation for reform. And about the year 243, Agis, one of the 
Spartan kings, put himself at the head of this movement. 

Agis was a youthful hero, full of noble daring and pure 
enthusiasm. He gave his own property to the state, and per- 



CLEOMENES OF SPARTA 227 

suaded his relatives and friends to do the like. He planned 
to abolish all debts, and to divide the land among forty-five 
hundred Spartan "Inferiors" (p. 202) and fifteen thousand 
other Laconians, so as to re-found the state upon a broad and 
democratic basis. He could easily have won by violence; 
but he refused such methods, and sought his ends by con- 
stitutional means only. The oligarchs rose against him ; and 
the young king, with his noble mother and grandmother, was 
murdered in prison, — " the purest and noblest spirit that ever 
perished through deeming others as pure and noble as himself." 

But the ideals of the martyr lived on. His wife was forced Cleomenes 
to marry Cleomenes, son of the other king; and, from her, 
this prince adopted the hopes of Agis. Cleomenes became king 
in 236. He had less of high sensitiveness and of stainless honor 
than Agis, but he is a grand and colossal figure. He bided his 
time ; and then, when the oligarchs were planning to use force 
against him, he struck first. 

Aratus had led the Achaean League into war with Sparta War 
in ordfer to unite all the Peloponnesus ; but the military genius spartTand 
of Cleomenes made even enfeebled Sparta a match for the the League 
powerful league. He won two great victories. Then, the league 
being helpless for the moment, he used his popularity to secure 
reform in Sparta. The oligarchs were plotting against him, 
but he was enthusiastically supported by the disfranchised 
multitudes. Leaving his Spartan troops at a distance, he 
hurried to the city by forced marches with some chosen followers. 
There he slew the leaders of the oligarchs, and proclaimed a 
new constitution which contained the reforms of Agis. 

Cleomenes wished to make this new Sparta the head of the Sparta 
Peloponnesus. He and Aratus each desired a free, united ^<^*°"ous 
Greece, but under different leadership. Moreover, Sparta now 
stood forth the advocate of a kind of socialism, and so was 
particularly hateful to the aristocratic government of the league. 

The struggle between the two powers was renewed with 
fresh bitterness. Cleomenes won more victories, and then, 
with the league at his feet, he offered generous terms. He 



228 



GRABCO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



demanded that Sparta be admitted to the union as virtual 
leader. This would have created the greatest power ever seen 
in Greece, and, for the time, it would have made a free Hellas 
sure. The Achaeans were generally in favor of accepting the 
proposal ; but Aratus — jealous of Cleomenes and fearful of 
social reform — broke off the negotiations by underhanded 
methods. 

Then Aratus bought the aid of Macedon against Sparta, by 
betraying Corinth, a free member of the league and the city 
connected with his own most glorious exploit. The war now 
became a struggle for Greek freedom, waged by Sparta under 
her hero king against the overwhelming power of Macedon 
assisted by the confederacy 05 a vassal state. Aratus had undone 
his own great work. 

For a while, Sparta showed surprising vigor, but in the end 
Macedon prevailed. Cleomenes fled to Egypt, to die in 
exile ; Sparta opened her gates for the first time to a conquering 
army ; and the glory of the great league was forever gone. 

At almost the same time the rest of the widespread Hellenistic 
world fell into rapid decline. In 220 a.d. the thrones of Syria, 
Egypt, and Macedonia passed to youthful heirs, and all three 
of these new monarchs showed a degeneracy which is common 
in Oriental ruling families after a few generations of greatness. 
Only a little later began the •absorption of the East by Rome. 
Before turning to this new power, we will note a few more things 
about Hellenistic civilization. 



CHAPTER XXI 

HELLENISTIC SOCIETY 

Hellenism began to decline politically, we have said, about The 
220 B.C. ; but the splendor of Hellenistic civilization grew for ^^^andrian 
more than a half-ceiitury longer. From 280 to 150 B.C. that 
civilization had its chief glory. This period is often known 
as "the Alexandrian Age," from the Egyptian capital which 
now led the many other homes of culture. 

Society was refined ; the position of woman improved ; 
private fortunes abounded, and private houses possessed works 
of art which, in earlier times, would have been found only in 
palaces or temples. For the reverse side, there was corruption 
in high places, and hungry and threatening mobs at the base 
of society. 

The many-sided age produced new forms in art and literature : Literature 
especially (1) the prose romance, a story of love and adventure, 
the forerunner of the modern novel ; (2) the pastoral poetry of 
Theocritus, which was to influence Virgil and Tennyson ; and 
(3) personal memoirs. Treatises &n literary criticism abounded ; 
the science of grammar was developed ; and poets prided them- 
selves upon writing all kinds of verse equally well. Intel- 
lectually, in its faults, as in its virtues, the time strikingly 
resembles our own. 

Painting was carried to great perfection. According to Painting 
popular stories, Zeuxis painted a cluster of grapes so that birds s°yi„t„jg 
pecked at them, while Apelles painted a horse so that real 
horses neighed at the sight. 

Greek sculpture, too, produced some of its greatest work in 
this period. Multitudes of splendid statues were created — 
so abundantly, indeed, that even the names of the artists are 

229 



230 GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 

not preserved. Among the famous pieces that survive are 
the Dying Gaul (p. 220), the Apollo Belvidere (p. 219), the Venus 
of Milo (Melos), and the Laocoon group. 



Venus of Melos. — This most beautiful statue in the world is now in the 

Louvre. 

Philosophy After Socrates, Greek philosophy had three periods. 
\ . (For the -period of Spartan and Theban leadership.) The 

most famous disciple of Socrates is known to the world by his 



STOICS AND EPICUREANS 231 

nickname Plato, the "broad-browed." His name, and that of 
his pupil and rival, Aristotle, of the next period, are among 
the greatest in the history of ancient thought, — among the 
very greatest, indeed, in all time. Plato taught that things 
are merely the shadows of ideas, and that ideas alone are real. 
But this statement gives a very imperfect picture of his beau- 
tiful and mystical philosophy — which is altogether too com- 
plex to treat here. 

(For the Macedonian period.) Aristotle, on the other hand, 
cared more about things. Besides his philosophical treatises, 
he wrote upon rhetoric, logic, poetry, politics, physics and 
chemistry, and natural history ; and he built up all the knowl- 
edge gathered by the ancient world into one complete system. 
For the intellectual world of his day he worked a task not 
unlike that of his pupil Alexander in the political world. More 
than any other of the ancients, too, he was many-sided and 
modern in his way of thinking. 

(For the period after Alexander.) During the Wars of the Suc- 
cession, two new philosophical systems were born, — Epicurean- 
ism and Stoicism. Each called itself highly "practical." 
Neither asked, as older philosophies had done, "What is true?" 
Stoicism asked (in a sense following Socrates), " What is right ? " 
and Epicureanism asked merely, "What is expedient?" One 
sought virtue ; the other, happiness. Neither sought knowledge. 

I . Epicurus was an Athenian citizen. He taught that every The Epicu- 
man must pursue happiness as an end, but that the highest reans 
pleasure was to be obtained by a wise choice of the refined 
pleasures of the mind and of friendship, — not by gratifying 
the lower appetites. He advised temperance and virtue as 
means to happiness ; and he himself lived a frugal life, saying 
that with a crust of bread and a cup of cold water he could 
rival Zeus in happiness. Under cover of his theories, however, 
some of his followers taught and practiced gross living. 

The Epicureans denied the supernatural, and held death 
to be the end of all things. Epicureanism produced some 
lovable characters, but no exalted ones. 



232 



GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 



2. Zeno the Stoic also taught at Athens, in the painted porch 
{stod) on the north side of the market place. His followers 
made virtue, not happiness, the end of life. If happiness were 
to come at all, it would come, they said, as a result, not as an 
end. They placed emphasis upon the dignity of human nature : 
the wise man should be superior to the accidents of fortune. 

The Stoics believed in the gods as manifestations of one 
Divine Providence that ordered all things well. The noblest 
characters of the Greek and Roman world from this time be- 
longed to this sect. Stoicism was inclined, however, to ignore 
the gentler and kindlier side of human life ; and with bitter 
natures it merged into the philosophy of the Cynics, of whom 
Diogenes, with his tub and lantern, is the great example.^ 

Both Stoics and Epicureans held to a wide brotherhood of 
man. (This teaching was one result of the union of the world 
in the new Graeco-Oriental culture. It would have been un- 
thinkable before the battle of Arbela.) For the educated classes, 
philosophy now took the place of religion as a guide to life. 
The philosophers were the clergy of the next few centuries 
much more truly than the priests of the temples were. 

The closing age of Hellenistic history saw the forerunner of 
the modern university. The beginning was made at Athens. 
Plato (p. 231), by his will, left his gardens and other property 
to his followers, organized in a club. Athenian law did not 
recognize the right of any group of people to hold property, 
unless it were a religious body. Therefore this club claimed 
to be organized for the worship of the Muses, who were the 
patrons of literature and learning ; and the name Museum was 
given to the institution. This was the first endowed academy, 
and the first union of teachers and learners into a corporation.^ 

The idea has never since died out of the world. The model 
and name were used a little later by the Ptolemies at Alexan- 
dria in their " Museum." This was a richly endowed institution, 

1 Special report : the stories of Diogenes. 

2 A corporation is a body of men recognized by the law as a "person" so 
far as property rights go. 



SCIENCE AND LEARNING 233 

with large numbers of students. It had a great library of over 
half a million volumes (manuscripts), with scribes to make 
careful copies of them and to make their meaning more clear, 
when necessary, by explanatory notes. The accuracy of their 
work was so generally recognized that every important city 
in the Hellenic world wished its library to have an "Alex- 
andrian edition" of each famous book, as the standard work 
upon which to base copies. It is upon such copies of Alexan- 
drian books that our modern printed editions of Greek books 
are mainly based. One enterprise, of incalculable benefit to the 
later world, shows the zeal of the Ptolemies in collecting and 
translating texts. Alexandria had many Jews in its population, 
but they were coming to use the Greek language. Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus (p. 221), for their benefit, had the Hebrew Scriptures 
translated into Greek. This is the famous Septuagint translation, 
so called from the tradition that it was the work of seventy 
scholars. 

The Alexandrian Museum had also observatories and bo- 
tanical and zoological gardens, with collections of rare plants 
and animals from distant parts of the world. The librarians, 
and the other scholars who were gathered about the institution, 
devoted their lives to a search for knowledge and to teaching ; 
and so they corresponded to the faculty of a modern university. 

"The external appearance [of the Museum] was that of a group of 
buildings which served a common purpose — temple of the Muses, 
library, porticoes, dwellings, and a hall for meals. . . The inmates 
were a community of scholars and poets, on whom the king bestowed 
the honor and privilege of being allowed to work at his expense with 
all imaginable assistance ready to hand." — Holm. 

Science made greater strides than ever before in an equal Science 
length of time. Medicine, surgery, botany, and mechanics 
began to be real sciences. Archimedes of Syracuse discovered 
the principles of the lever and of specific gravity, as our 
high school students learn them in physics, and constructed 
burning mirrors and new hurling engines which made effective 
siege artillery. (See Davis' Readings, II, No. 27.) Euclid, a 



234 



GRAECO-ORTBNTAL WORLD 



Greek at Alexandria, building upon the old Egyptian knowledge, 
produced the geometry which is still taught in our schools with 
little addition. Eratosthenes (born 276 B.C.), the librarian at 
Alexandria, wrote a systematic work on geography, invented 
delicate astronomical instruments, and devised the present 
way of measuring the circumference of the earth — with results 
nearly correct. His maps were the first to use meridians and 
parallels to show latitude and longitude. A little later, Aris- 
tarchiis taught that the earth moved round the sun; and 




THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ERATOSTHENES 



CThje Latin namee are taken from Strabo, two centuries later, 
who eloaely followed Eratostlienes.) 



Hipparchus calculated eclipses, catalogued the stars, wrote 
books on astronomy, and founded the science of trigonometry. 
Aristotle had already given all the proofs of the sphericity of 
the earth that are common in our textbooks now (except that 
of actual circumnavigation) and had asserted that men could 
probably reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. The scientific 
spirit gave rise, too, to actual voyages of exploration into many 
regions. Daring discoverers brought back from northern 
regions wild tales of icebergs gleaming in the cold aurora of 
the polar skies, and, from southern voyages, stories of hairy 
men ("Gorillas") in vine-tangled tropical forests. 



OUR DEBT TO THE GREEKS 



235 



The first Ptolemy built a lighthouse on the island of Pharos, 
in the harbor of Alexandria, to protect the rapidly growing 
commerce of that city (p. 221). The new civilization had be- 
gun to make practical use of its science to advance human wel- 
fare. The tower rose 325 feet (thirty stories) into the air, 
and from the summit a group of polished reflecting mirrors 
threw its light at night far out to sea. It seemed to the Jew- 
ish citizens of Alexandria to make real once more the old 




Alexandrian Lighthouse {Tower of Pharos), as "restored" by Adler. 
This structure fell in 1326 a.d. 

Hebrew story of the Pillar of Cloud by day and of Fire by 
night, — to guide wanderers on the wastes of waves. " All 
night," said a Greek poet, "will the sailor, driving before the 
storm, see the fire gleam from its top." 

The Greek contributions to our civilization we cannot name 
and count, as we did those from the preceding Oriental 
peoples. Egypt and Babylon gave us some very important 
outer features, — garments, if we choose so to speak, for the 
body of our civilization. But the Greeks gave us its soul. This is 
the truth in the noble sentence quoted at the head of Greek 
history in this volurae (page 82), "We are all Greeks." Said 



Our debt 
to Hellas 



236 GRAECO-ORIENTAL WORLD 

another great historian, '"There is nothing that moves in the 
world to-day that is not Greek in origin." 

Because the Greek contributions are of the spirit rather 
than of the body, they are harder to describe in a brief sum- 
mary. One supreme thing, however, must be mentioned. The 
Greeks gave us the ideal of freedom, regulated by self-control, — 
freedom in thought, in reUgion, and in pohtics. 



References for Further Study. — Specially suggested: Davis' 
Readings, I, Nos. 119-125 (19 pages, mostly from Polybius, Arrian, and 
Plutarch, the three Greek historians of that age). 

Additional: Plutarch's Lives ("Aratus," "Agis," "Cleomenes," 
" Philopoemen " ) ; Mahaffy's Alexander's Empire. 

Exercise. — Review the various confederacies, — Peloponnesian, 
Delian, Achaean, — noting Likenesses and contrasts. Review the period 
from Chaeronea to the death of Alexander by "catch words." Note 
the various stages in making war (both as to arms and as to organi- 
zation) from the Stone Age to Alexander. 

This is a good point at which to review certain other " culture topics," 
— i.e., agriculture, industrial arts, Ufe of rich and poor, philosophy, 
literature, art, religion, science, — tracing each separately from the 
dawn of history. 

Make a table showing the chief divisions of Greek history, with sub- 
divisions. 

Fact Drills on Greek History 

1. The class should form a Table of Dates gradually as the critical 
points are reached, and should then drill upon it until it says itself as the 
alphabet does. The following dates are enough for this drill in Greek 
history. The table should be filled out as is done for the first two dates. 

776 B.C. First recorded Olympiad 338 b.c. 

490 " Marathon 220 " 

405 " 146 " 

371 " 

2. Name in order fifteen battles, between 776 and 146 b.c, stating for 
each the parties, leaders, result, and importance. {Such tables also 
should be made by degrees as the events are reached.) 

3. Explain concisely the following terms or names: Olympiads, 
Mycenaean Culture, Olympian Religion, Amphictyonies, Sappho. 
{Let the class extend the list several fold.) 



^^1 



PART IV 
ROME 

The center of our studies, the goal of our thoughts, the point to which 
all paths lead and the point from which all paths start again, is to be found 
in Rome and her abiding power. — Freeman. 



CHAPTER XXII 

LAND AND PEOPLE 

About 200 B.C. the historical "center of gravity " shifted t^^esf- 
ward once more to Italy, which till then had been merely an out- 
lying fragment of the civilized world. 

Modern Italy is made up of two distinct parts, — the level Meaning of 

valley of the Po running from east to west, and the slender .^^ *° 
'' _ "^ _ ' ancient 

mountainous peninsula reaching from that valley south into times 
the Mediterranean. But in ancient times the Po valley was 
always considered part of Gaul. It was called Cisalpine Gaul, 
or Gaul this side the Alps. The name Italy belonged only to 
the true peninsula with the Apennine range for its backbone. 

Three things are important in Italy's geography : Geography 

1 . The geographical divisions are larger, and less com- ^^^ 
pletely set off from one another, than those in Greece; so the 
inhabitants were more easily united under one government. 

2. Italy and Greece stood back to back. Italy faced, not 
the old East, but the new West. The mountains are nearer the 
eastern coast than the western : so, on the eastern side the 
short rocky spurs and swift torrents lose themselves quickly 
in the Adriatic. The western slope is nearly twice as broad : 
here are rivers and fertile plains, and, as a result, most of the 
few harbors and the important states. When Italy was ready 

237 



238 



EARLY ROME 



for outside work, she gave herself first to conquering and 
civiHzing the lands of the western Mediterranean. 

3. European culture began in the peninsula which was at once 
" the most European of European lands" and also the European 
* land nearest to the older civilizations of the East (p. 131). 
Just as naturally, the state which was to unite and rule all the 
coasts of the Mediterranean had its home in the central peninsula 
which divides that inland sea. When her struggle for empire 
began, her central position enabled Italy to cut off the Cartha- 
ginian power in Africa and Spain from its allies in the East, and 
to conquer her enemies one by one. 

Note that Liguria, Gallia Cisalpina, and Venetia are out- 
side the true Italy (p. 237). Fix the position of Etruria, 
Latium, Campania, Samnium, and the Sabines. Observe 
that the Arnus (Arno), in Etruria, the Tiber, between 
Etruria and Latium, and the Liris, between Latium and 
Campania, are the most important rivers. Their basins 
were homes of early culture in Italy. 

In prehistoric times, the fame of Italy's rich plains and 
sunny, vine-covered slopes had tempted swarm after swarm 
of barbarians across the Alps and the Adriatic ; and already 
at the opening of history the land held a curious mixture of 
races. 

The center of the peninsula was the home of the Italians, who 
were finally to give their language and law to the whole land. 
The western Italians were lowlanders, and were called Latins. 
One of their cities, Rome, on the Tiber, is now to be the subject 
of our study. The eastern and larger section of Italians were 
highlanders (Sabines, Samnites, Volscians). The more im- 
portant of the other races were the Greeks in the south (p. 108), 
the savage Gauls of the Po valley, and the Etruscans in Etruria 
across the Tiber from the Latins. The Etruscans were a mys- 
terious people — "the standing riddle of history." They were 
the first civilized race in Italy, long before the Greek settle- 
ments began in the south. They were mighty builders. They 



ITALY 

REFERENCE MAP 




LEGENDS OF THE KINGS 



239 



had a system of writing, and have left many inscriptions, in a 
language to which scholars can find no key. They were the 
first people in Italy to engage in commerce ; and before they 
sent out trading ships themselves, they welcomed those of the 
Phoenicians. Their early tombs contain many articles of 
Egyptian and Phoenician and early Greek workmanship, 



"Italians" 
Cumbrians) 

Etruscans 

Greeks 

Gauls 

Ligurians 

Siculi, Veneti, 
and others 




TIFE PEOPLES 
OF ITALY 



Drought them by these early traders, who doubtless taught them 

many arts. The Etruscans, in turn, were Rome's first teachers. 

The Romans had no Homer. ^ Their early history, as it Old 

was first put together by their historians about 200 B.C., was ^®sends 

f o J ' about early 

^ Some modern scholars, however, believe that there must have been a 
copious ballad literature among the people, from which early historians 
could draw. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome was an attempt to reproduce 
such ballads as Macaulay thought must once have existed. 



240 



EARLY ROME 



a mass of curious legends. These are of interest now mainly 
because of the place they hold in poem and story. 

According to these legends Rome was founded in 753 B.C./ 
and for the next century and a half was ruled by a line of seven 
kings. The founder, Romulus, was the son of Mars (God of 
War) and of a Latin princess. As a babe he had been exposed 
to die, but was preserved and suckled by a wolf. He grew up 
among rude shepherds ; with their aid he built a city on the 




Remains of an Etruscan Wall and Arch at Sutri. 



Palatine Mount above the old wolf's den; here he gathered 
about him outlaws from all quarters, and these men seized the 
daughters of a Sabine tribe for wives. This led to war, and 
finally to the union of the Romans and the Sabines, who then 
settled upon one of the neighboring hills. Numa, the next 
king, was a Sabine. He established religious rites, and gave 
laws and arts of peace, which were taught him by the nymph 
Egeria in a sacred grove by night. Tullus Hostilius, a warlike 

1 Later Romans counted time from this year, as we do from the birth of 
Christ. We know now that there was a Stone-age settlement of Latins at 
" Rome " some centuries before 753. 



LEGENDS OF THE KINGS 



241 



conqueror, is a shadowy Romulus, and Ancus Marcius is a 
faint copy of Numa. The fifth king was Tarquin the First, 
an Etruscan adventurer, who was succeeded by Servius Tullius, 
son of a slave girl. Servius reorganized the government, and 
was followed by a second Tarquin, Tarquin the Proud, whose 




Etruscan Tombs at Orvieto, near Rome. — A name on one tomb is 
made out recently to be Tarkhnas, which perhaps is the Tarquinius of 
Roman tradition. 



oppression led to his expulsion and to the establishment of a 
Republic. 

Since 1900, excavations have taught us much that the 
Romans themselves never knew about early Roman history. 
That history, as we now see it, is told in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



ROME UNDER THE KINQS 



The Latins called their district Latium. This territory was 
about the size of aii ordinary American county. It was broken 
here and there by scattered hills ; and on some one of these 
each Latin tribe had its citadel. Once a year all Latins gath- 
ered at one of these hill forts, Mount Alba, for a festival in honor 
of the chief Latin god, Jupiter ; and the straggling village 

Alba Longa (the Long White town) 
was the recognized leader of the 
Latin tribes in war against the 
robber bands of Sabines from the 
mountains and against the powerful 
Etruscans across the Tiber. 

Every Etruscan advance was 
watched with jealous dread by the 
Latins, with good reason ; but in 
many ways those dangerous neigh- 
bors had become necessary to Latin 
comfort. The Latins themselves 
were peasant farmers. There were no smiths or artisans among 
them. If a farmer needed a plowshare or a knife, he drove 
an ox across the plain to the bank of the Tiber, or sometimes 
carried grain there, to trade it to some Etruscan for the tool. 

In such trade the Etruscans made huge profits. About 
12 miles up the Tiber from its mouth (a third of the way from 
the sea to the mountains) the river could be crossed by a ford 
at the foot of an island (map, p. 243). To this place Etruscan 
traders very early began to bring wares of metal and wood on 
regular "market days," to tempt this profitable Latin trade. 

242 




ROME 

AND VICINITY 



UNDER THE KINGS 



243 



Now and then a Cretan or Phoenician ship thought it worth 
while to row up the river to share in this trade ; and to the 
same point the Sabines from the foothills of the Apennines 



ROME 

under fhe Kings 

2'A«/eur"«ri4«»"o/ 




1. Citadel (Arx) . 4. Citadel at Janiculum. 7. Senate House (Curia). 

2. Temple of Jupiter (Capitolinus). 5. " Wall of Romulus." 8. Comitium. '■ 

3. " Quays of the Tarquins." 6. Temple of Vesta. 

floated down their wine and grain on flat barges. Just south 
of the ford arose a remarkable group of seven low hills. The 
level space between these hills, opening on the river, became 
the regular marketplace, or Forum, for all this trade. 

At some early date the Etruscans improved the river-crossing 
by building a bridge there. This was welcome to the Latins 



244 



EARLY ROME 



for trade ; but they feared lest the Etruscans use it for armed 
invasion, and sc they guarded their end of it by building a 
square fort about the top of the Palatine, the steepest hill close 
by. Here a permanent Latin town at once grew up. This 
"square town" dates back at least to 1200 B.C. ; and in places 
solidly built walls may still be traced. 

Early settlements were made also on at least two other of 
the seven hills. Roman tradition says that one of these towns 
was founded by an invading tribe of Sabines, and the other by 
a conquering Etruscan tribe. No doubt, there was a long period 
of war between the three hill-forts, but, finally, the three settle- 
ments were united into one state, with the three tribes on an 
equal footing, one with another. 

The gain from this union was not merely in physical power. That 
was the least of it; Early societies are fettered rigidly by custom, so 
that the beginnings of change are inconceivably slow. In Rome, the 
union of distinct societies broke this bondage at a period far earlier 
than common. They became accustomed to a variety of customs, and 
they found how to live together peaceably even when their ways 
differed. Compromise took the place of inflexible custom. Thus began 
the process of association that was later to unite Italy. Rome was a 
city, not of one hill, like most Italian towns, but of seven hills. 

About 750 B.C. the old kings gave way to " tyrants," like those 
who seized power in Greek cities at about that same time. 
Some of these rulers in Rome seem to have been Etruscan ad- 
venturers. These "tyrants" drained the marshes and inclosed 
all seven hills within one wall — the so-called " wall of Servius " 
— taking in large open spaces for future city growth. The 
huge drain (Cloaca Maxima) and the remains of a massive 
wall, pictured in these pages, are supposed to belong to this 
period, and are undoubtedly due to Etruscan influence. 

These new kings also made Rome mistress of a third of all 
Latium. At the Tiber mouth, they founded Ostia, the first 
Roman colony, for a port ; and, on the north side of the river, 
Rome seized Mount Janiculwm and fortified it against the 
Etruscans. Before the year 500, several conquered Latin towns 



HOME LIFE AND RELIGION 



245 



had been razed and their inhabitants brought to Rome. Even 
Alba Longa had been destroyed, and Rome had succeeded to 

the headship of the Latin confederacy. 

The Kfe of the early Romans was plain and simple. Their Home life 
houses were like those of the primitive people all about the ^* ^^^^^ 
Mediterranean (p. 82), — small huts, often only one room, with 




Cloaca Maxima, as it was before a recent restoration. 



no chimney or window. The open door and an opening in 
the peaked roof let out the smoke from the hearth fire, and let 
in light; and a slight cavity directly below the roof -opening 
received the rain. 

Religion centered about the home and the daily tasks. For 
each house the door had its protecting god Janus, two-faced, 
looking in and out ; and each hearth fire had the goddess Vesta. 
When the city grew powerful, it had a city Janv^ and a city 



Religion 



246 



EARLY ROME 



Vesta. In the ancient round temple of Vesta, the holy fire of 
the city was kept always bright by the priestesses (Vestal 
Virgins), who had to keep themselves pure in thought and act, 
that they might not pollute its purity. For the fire to go out, 
or to be defiled in any way, would mean disaster. 

Next to the house gods came the gods of the farm : Saturn, the 
god of sowing; Ceres, the goddess who made the grain grow; 
Venus, another goddess of fruitfulness ; and Terminus, a god 
who dwelt in each boundary pillar, to guard the bounds of the 
farm — and, later, the boundaries of the state. 





An Early Roman Coin (As). — The head represents Janus; the reverse 
side shows a ship's prow — a suggestion that the wealth of Rome even 
then came largely from trade. 

The early Romans had also an ancestor worship at each family 
tomb, and each Latin tribe had its ancestral deity. The war 
god. Mars, father of the fabled Romulus, was at first the special 
god of Rome. But at the head of all the tribal gods of Latium 
stood Jupiter (Father Jove) ; and when Rome became the cen- 
tral Latin power, Jupiter became the center of the Roman re- 
ligion. 

The later Romans borrowed some Greek stories about the 
gods ; ^ but they lacked poetic imagination to create a beautiful 
mythology, as the Greeks had done. The Roman gods re- 
mained vague and misty. 

1 For the correspondence of Greek and Roman gods see page 100. 



PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 247 

Worship consisted in a strict observance of ceremonies. Ceremonial 
Divine favor could be lost by failure to use precise gestures ^°" ^ 
in a service, or by the omission or addition of a single word. 
On the other hand, if the ceremony was carried through in the 
proper manner, it almost compelled the aid of the gods, like a 
conjuror's charm. 

The gods at Rome manifested their will not by oracles but The augurs 
by omens, or auspices. These auspices were sought especially in 
the conduct of birds, and in the color and size of the entrails 
of animals. The interpretation of such signs became a kind of , 

science, in the possession of a "college" {collection) of augurs. 
Their "science" came from the Etruscans, and seems to have 
been related to old Babylonian customs. 

Religion became a mighty political instrument. No public 
act (vote, election, or battle) could be begun without divine 
approval. If the gods were properly consulted concerning a 
proposed measure and had manifested their approval, then, the 
Roman felt, they were under obligation to see it carried through. 
And the thrifty Roman drove hard bargains with his gods. 
The augurs, or soothsayers, called for fresh animals until the 
entrails gave the signs desired by the ruling magistrate, and 
then the gods were just as much bound as if they had shown 
favor at the first trial. The sky was watched until the de- 
sired birds did appear, and, in the later periods, tame birds were 
kept to give the required indications. 

The descendants of the original three tribes (p. 244) formed Patricians 
"the Roman people," in a strict sense. They were patricians plebeians 
(men "with fathers"). They alone could vote, or hold office, 
or sue in the courts. 

But, like the Greek cities, Italian cities contained many 
non-citizens. In Rome this class was especially large, partly 
because the city had brought within its walls many clans from 
conquered cities, and partly because adventurers and refugees 
thronged to a prosperous commercial center. These non- 
citizens were plebeians (or the plebs). Some of them were 



248 



EARLY ROME 



rich ; but none of them had any part in the religion, or law, or 
politics of the city. They could not intermarry with citizens. 
Policy required the city to protect their lives and property, 




So-called Wall of Servius. The old legends said that Servius built a 
wall about the seven hills. Cf. p. 244. This wall was thirteen feet 
thick and fifty feet high. It consisted of a huge rampart of earth, faced on 
each side by a wall of immense stones fitted together, without mortar. 
Part of this colossal structure has been uncovered recently on the Aventine. 



but they had no absolute security against an unscrupulous 
patrician. 

The Roman father had complete authority over his sons and 
grandsons as long as he lived, even when they were grown men 
and perhaps in the ruling offices of the city. When his son took 



PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 249 

a wife, she, too, leaving her own family, came under his con- 
trol. His own daughters passed by marriage from his hand 
under that of some other house-father. The father ruled his 
household, and the households of his male descendants, as priest, 
judge, and king. He could sell or slay his wife, unmarried 
daughter, grown-up son, or son's wife ; and all that was theirs 
was his. No appeal lay from him to any higher judge. In 
practice, however, the father was influenced somewhat by near 
relatives and by public opinion. It is a curious fact that, 
despite the legal slavery of women, the Roman matrons had a 
dignity and public influence unknown in Greece. 

The patrician government had three parts, — king, Senate, The 
and Assembly (as in Homeric Greece). The king stood to the g^vermnent 
state as the father to the family, and was somewhat more 
important than the early Greek kings were. The Senate 
seems to have been originally a council of the chiefs of the 300 
clans (or gentes) that made up the three tribes. It could advise 
the king, and it could veto any change in old custom. The As- 
sembly of patricians met only at the call of the king. Its 
approval was necessary for offensive war and for any change 
in old customs.^ It did not debate. It listened to the king's 
proposals, and voted yes or no. 

Before the "tyrants" disappeared, they had helped the Gains by 
plebeians to gain some political power. This advance they t^^® Pl^'^s 
made in connection with a change in the army. tyrants 

Originally the army was made up of the patricians and their 
immediate dependents. But as the plebeians grew in numbers, 
the kings needed their service also. According to legend, 
"Servius" divided all landholders, plebeian as well as patrician, 
into six classes, armed according to their wealth ; and each of 
these classes was divided into a fixed number of companies, or 
centuries. 

In barbarous society, the obligation to fight and the right to vote The 
go together. (Cf. page 117.) Gradually this army of centuries p/c^J^. ^ 

1 Early societies have very little law-making. This process of definitely 
changing an old custom, on rare occasions, corresponds to modern legislation. 



250 



EARLY ROME 



became, in peace, an Assembly of Centuries, which took over 
the poUtical power of the older patrician Assembly. 

The patricians, however, kept most of the power in the new 
Assembly. As population increased, the poorer classes grew in 
numbers faster than the rich ; but they did not gain duly in 
political weight, because the 'patricians kept the number of 
centuries from being changed. The patricians had a majority 
in the centuries of the upper classes. These centuries shrank 
up into skeleton companies, while the centuries of the lower 
classes came to contain far more than 100 men each. But each 
century, full or skeleton, counted just one vote. This gave the 
patricians a vast advantage over the more numerous plebeians. 

None the less it was a gain that the position of a man was 
fixed not by his birth, but by his wealth — something that he 
might help change. The first great barrier against democracy 
was broken down. 



Exercise. — Can the student point out a likeness between early 
Rome and early Athens that aided in both cases a more liberal develop- 
ment than was common in cities about them ? Point to any other 
likenesses in the early development of Rome and Greek cities. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE EARLY REPUBLIC, TO 367 B.C. 

I. EXPULSION OF THE KINGS 

About 500 B.c.^ the Romans got rid of their kings, as other 
ItaHan cities were doing at the same time. We do not know the 
details, but in some way the patrician nobles succeeded in 
replacing the life-king by two elected consuls. 

The consuls held office for only one year, but for that year King 
they were "joint kings." They called and dissolved AssembUes ^®P*^*^®** 
at will. They alone could propose measures or nominate consuls 
magistrates — even to succeed themselves. They filled vacan- 
cies in the Senate. They ruled the city in peace, and com- 
manded the army in war. 

In two ways, however, even during his year, the consul's 
real power was less than that of the old kings. (1) Either consul 
might find any of his proposed acts absolutely forbidden 
("vetoed") by his colleague. (2) He knew. that, when his short 
term was over, he might be called to account by the Assembly, 
and punished for any abuse of power. 

Moreover, the permanent Senate had gained power. Its 
relation to a one-year consul was very different from its old 
relation to a life-king. The king had been jealous of it: the 
consul wished above all things to become a member of it. 

1 Later historians, familiar with the history of Greece, dated this change in 
510, the same year in which Athens finally drove out the last of the tyrants. 
The stories for this period may be read in Livy. They have no value as his- 
tory, but they have value as literature. Some of them, — the Battle of 
Lake Regillus, Brutus and his sons, Horatius at the Bridge, and the Porsenna 
anecdotes, —might be reproduced in class, or in an English class. The 
second and third of these are given in Davis' Readings, II, Nos. 7 and 8. 
This is a good place for the student, who has not before done so, to be- 
come acquainted with Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. (Cf. p. 239, note.) 

251 



252 



EARLY ROME 



Its advice became more and more like a command, until it 
grew to be the real "government." 

The division of power between two consuls, with the chance 
of a deadlock by a mutual veto, might be fatal in a time of 
foreign peril. Rome found escape from such danger by arrang- 
ing at need to revive the old kingship under a new name. At 
the request of the Senate either consul might appoint a dictator. 
This officer was absolute master of Rome, save that his term of 
office could not exceed six months. He was the two consuls in 
one, with half their length of office. He had power of life and 
death in the city as in the army ; and he could not be questioned 
for his acts even when he had laid down his powers. He could 
not, however, nominate a successor. 



II. CLASS STRUGGLES: METHODS 

The first century and a half of the Republic was a stern con- 
flict between patricians and plebeians. The peculiar mark of this 
long internal struggle was the absence of extreme violence. The 
vehement class conflicts in Greek cities were marked by bloody 
revolutions and counter-revolutions : the contest in Rome was 
carried on "with a calmness, deliberation, and steadiness that 
corresponded to the firm, persevering, sober, practical Roman 
character." When the victory of the plebs was once won, the 
result was correspondingly permanent. 

The overthrow of the kings was in no sense a democratic move- 
ment. It left Rome an oligarchy. The last kings had leaned upon 
the lower orders. The plebeians found themselves the losers 
in politics, in law, and in property rights, by the change. 

1. They could hold no office ; they controlled only a minority 
of centuries in the x\ssembly and they had no way even to 
get a measure considered. At best, they could vote only upon 
laws proposed by patrician magistrates, and they could help 
elect only patrician officers, who had been nominated by other 
patricians. The patrician Senate, too, had a final veto upon 
any vote of the centuries ; and, in the last resort, the patrician 
consuls could always fall back upon the patrician augurs to 



PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 253 

prevent a possible plebeian victory — since the augurs could 
forbid a vote by declaring the auspices unfavorable. 

2. The kings had found it pay to see justice done the plebs, 
but now law became again a patrician possession. It was un- 
written, and, to the plebs, unknown. It was easy, there- 
fore, for a patrician to take shameful advantage in lawsuits. 

3. When Rome conquered a hostile city, she took away a 
half or a third of its territory. This new territory became a 
common pasture ground. It helonged to the state, and a small tax 
was paid for the right to graze cattle upon it. By selfish patri- 
cian law, only the patricians had the right to use this grazing Unjust 
land, but the kings had extended the privilege to the plebs also. ^"^^ ®^® 
The patricians now resumed their sole right, and thus reduced to 
painful straits the poorer plebeians who had eked out a scanty 
income from their small farms by such aid. To make matters 
worse, the patrician officers ceased to collect the grazing tax. 

Thus the public land was enjoyed by the patricians as private 
property, without purchase or tax, while the tax on plebeian farms 
had to be increased to supply the falling off to the treasury. 

The conditions of warfare, also, bore more heavily upon War hard 
the small farmer than upon the great landlord. The farmer was ^^°^ ® 
called away frequently to battle. The plebeian farmer had no 
servants to till his fields in his absence ; and his possessions were 
more exposed to hostile forays than were the strongly fortified 
holdings of his greater neighbor. He might return to find his 
crops ruined by delay, or his homestead in ashes, and he could 
no longer apply to the king for assistance to rebuild. 

Thus, more and more, the plebeians were forced to borrow Plebeian 
tax money from patrician money lenders, or to get advances of ® ^'^''^ 
seed corn and cattle from a neighboring landlord. The debtor's 
land and his person were both mortgaged for payment. On 
failure to pay, the plebeian debtor became the property of the 
creditor. He was compelled thereafter to till his land (no 
longer his) for the creditor's benefit ; or, if he refused to accept 
this result, he was cast into a dungeon, loaded with chains, and 
torn with stripes. 



254 



EARLY ROME 



Some plebeians were rich in goods and lands ; but they, too, 
were bitterly dissatisfied. This was true especially of the 
descendants of the ruling families of the conquered Latin towns 
whose populations had been removed to Rome. These men 
were aggrieved because they were not allowed to hold office 

or to intermarry with the 
old Roman families. Thus 
they became the natural 
leaders of the mass of 
poorer plebeians. 

At first the masses 
clamored for relief from 
the cruel laws regarding 
debt, and for a share in the 
public lands. The leaders 
cared more for equality 
with the patricians in the 
law courts and for social 
equality and political office. 
Gradually the whole body 
of the plebeians, also, be- 
gan to demand these things 
because they found that what- 
ever economic rights they loon 
were of no value, so long 
as the laws ivere carried out 
only by patrician officials. 

Livy, an old Roman his- 
torian, gives a graphic ac- 
count of the first great 
clash between the classes (497 B.C.). Probably the story is 
essentially correct, and certainly it illustrates the methods by 
which the plebeians made their gains. 

The plebs, driven to despair by the cruelty of patrician creditors, 
refused to serve in a war against the Volscians, until the consul won 
them over by freeing all debtors from prison. But when the army 




Remains or an Etruscan Wall at 
Perugia To-day. The large stones on 
the right are the original wall. The 
small stones on the upper part of the 
left, and toward the top, are a later re- 
construction. The arch itself was re- 
made in the Middle Ages and shows the 
Gothic character (p. 562) . The picture 
illustrates the way in which medieval 
Italy rebuilt its decaying ancient struc- 
tures for its own uses. Cf. also pp. 
360, 381. 



PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 



255 



returned victorious, the other consul refused to recognize his col- 
league's acts ; he arrested the debtors again, and enforced the law with 
merciless cruelty. On a renewal of the war, the betrayed plebs again 
declined to fight; but finally Manius Valerius (of the great Valerian 
house "that loved the people well") was made dictator, and him they 
trusted. Victory again followed ; but Valerius was unable to get the 
consent of the Senate to his proposed changes in the law. So the 
plebeian army, still in battle array outside the gates, marched away 
to a hill across the Anio, some three miles from Rome, where, they 
declared, they were going to build a Rome of their own. The "strike " 
brought the patricians to some real concessions (p. 257), and the plebs 
returned from the "Sacred Mount." 




Bridge over the Anio To-day, on the old road from Rome to the 
" Sacred Mount." This bridge was built in the Middle Ages. 



The patricians were especially bitter toward any of their own Patrician 
order who were great-souled enough and brave enough to dare '\^''o®s w°o 
take the side of the people. The first such hero was Spuritis justice 
Cassius. He had served Rome gloriously in war and in states- 
manship, and finally, as consul, he proposed a reform in the 
selfish patrician management of the public lands. The 
patricians raised the cry that he was trying to win popular 
favor so as to make himself tyrant. This was a favorite patri- 
cian trick. The foolish plebeians allowed themselves to be 



256 



EARLY ROME 



frightened by the charge : they deserted their champion, and he 
was put to death. Under Hke conditions, two other heroes, 
Spurius Maelius and Marcus Manlius, the man who had saved 
Rome from the Gauls (p. 261), fell before like charges. 

Sometimes the later aristocratic historians blackened the 
memory of such "traitors" even further. There was Appius 
Claudius, who joined the plebeians, in 451 B.C., in an effort 
to secure fixed written laws (p. 257). He was put to death by the 
patricians, and his overthrow was afterward represented as the 
work of a popular rising. Claudius, said the patrician story, 
seized the free maid Virginia as his slave girl ; her father, Vir- 
ginius, a popular officer, to save her from such shame, slew her 
with his own hand, and then called upon the army to avenge 
his wrongs ; his comrades marched upon the tyrants and over- 
threw them. We cannot tell whether or not there is any truth 
in the story. Possibly Claudius did put the cause of the people 
in danger by selfish tyranny, and gave the patricians a handle 
against him ; but in any case we may be sure this was not the 
real cause of his overthrow. The popular rising, we know, was 
directed, not against him, but at his patrician murderers who 
were trying to cheat the people out of their previous gains. 

Another instructive feature of the contest is the way in 
which the aristocratic class by trick and superior skill, over 
and over again, took back with one hand what they had been 
forced to surrender with the other ; so that the masses had to 
win their cause many times, to really secure the fruits of victory. 



III. STEPS IN THE PLEBEIAN GAINS 

The secession of 497 B.C. gave the plebs the right to choose 
tribunes, with power to protect oppressed plebeians against 
cruel laws. It was agreed that the tribunes should have 
the right to stop any magistrate in any act by merely calling 
out veto ("I forbid") — just as one consul could "veto" an- 
other. This veto could be exercised only within the city (not 
in war), and by the tribunes in person. Hence a tribune's door 
was left always unlocked, so that a plebeian in trouble might 



PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 



257 



Written law 



have instant admission. The person of a tribune was made 
sacred — to protect him against patrician violence. Two 
were elected each year. Later the number was increased to ten. 

At the close of a patrician consul's term of office, a tribune 
could bring him to trial before the Assembly, for offenses against 
the people. The power of 'veto, too, was extended until a 
tribune could forbid even the putting of a question to vote in 
the Assembly ; and from a seat just outside the Senate door he 
could stop any proceeding in that body by crying out a loud 
veto. Thus the tribunes could bring the whole patrician govern- 
ment to a standstill. 

About 460 B.C. the plebeians began to demand written laws. 
The patricians opposed the demand furiously ; but after a ten- 
year contest a board of ten men (Decemvirs) was elected to put 
the laws into writing. Their laws were engraved on twelve 
stone tables, in short, crisp sentences, and set up where all 
might read them. 

These "Laws of the Twelve Tables" were the basis of all 
later Roman law. Like the first written laws at Athens, they 
were very severe, and were for the most part simply old customs 
reduced to writing. The new thing about them was that they 
were now known to all, and that they applied to plebeian and 
patrician alike. 

At some early date (legend says in the days of Servius), the Assembly 
city and its territory outside the walls had been divided into ^^ Tribes 
twenty-one "wards," or "tribes," for the military levy. In 
some way the meeting of the inhabitants of these local units 
grew into a regular "Assembly." The plebeians, who had no 
complete organization in clans, made use of this new Assembly 
of "Tribes" for purposes of government. It was here they 
chose their tribunes, and adopted their plans, and passed decrees 
iplebiscita) binding upon all of their order. The tribunes called 
this Assembly together and presided over it, as the consuls did 
with the Assembly of Centuries. Probably a patrician had a 
right to attend the meeting of the "tribe" in which he lived; 
but at this stage he would not care to do so. 



Laws of 
the Twelve 
Tables 



258 



EARLY ROME 



The plebeians, finding themselves helpless in the Assembly 
of Centuries, began to insist upon bringing oppressive patrician 
consuls for trial before this Assembly of Tribes. Then, a little 
later, they demanded that the plebiscites of their Assembly 
should be law, binding uj^on the whole state, just as the decrees 
of the Assembly of Centuries were. This point they finally 
carried, though the Senate kept a veto upon the decrees of both 
Assemblies. 

Thus the first half-century of conflict failed to admit the 
plebeians into the patrician state ; but it set up a double 
state, — a plebeian state over against the old patrician state. 
Assembly of Tribes and its tribunes over against the Assembly 
of Centuries and its consuls. There was no real arbiter, and 
no check upon civil war except the Roman moderation and 
preference for constitutional methods. The next work was to 
fuse these two governments into one. 

Soon the Assembly of Tribes decreed that plebeians should 
have the right to marry with patricians, and the Senate was 
forced to approve this plebiscite by the threat of another seces- 
sion. The two orders began now to mix in social matters, and 
this prepared the way for political fusion. Those patriciana 
who had plebeian relatives were not likely to oppose bitterly 
the demands of that class for political honors. Still the final 
contest was a long one, lasting 78 years more. 

In 445 the tribes voted that the people should be allowed to 
choose a plebeian for one of the consuls. The Senate refused 
to allow the "religious" office of consul to be "polluted," but 
they offered a compromise. Accordingly it was decided to have 
no consuls in some years, but instead to elect military tribunes 
with consular power, and this office was to be open to both patricians 
and plebeians. 

It had been left to the Senate to decide each year whether! 
consuls or consular tribunes should be elected. The Senate] 
used this authority to secure the election of consuls (who, of] 
course, had to be patricians) twenty times out of the next] 



PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS 259 

thirty-five years. And even when consular tribunes were Censors 
chosen, the patrician influence in the Assembly of Centuries 
kept that office for their own order. 

At the same time, with their old stronghold threatened, the 
patricians prepared an inner fortress for defense of their priv- 
ileges. A new office, the censorship, was created, to take over 
the religious part of the consul's duty and his most important 
powers. To this office, only patricians could be elected. Every 
fifth year two censors were chosen, with power to revise the 
lists of the citizens and of the Senate. By their mere order they 
could deprive any man of citizenship, or degrade a senator. 
They also exercised a general moral oversight over the state. 
Either censor could veto action by the other. Their tremendous 
power was used commonly with moderation, and not for partisan 
ends. 

An invasion by the Gauls in 390 (p. 261) almost ruined Rome The 
and thrust aside party conflict for a time ; but in 377 the final /"^^'^ 
campaign began. Under the wise leadership of the tribune 
Liciniv^ Stolo, the whole body of plebeians united firmly on a 
group of measures. These were proposed to the Assembly by 
Licinius, and are known as the Licinian Laws. 

The three most important demands were: (1) that the 
office of consul should be restored, and that at least one consul 
each year should be a plebeian; (2) that no citizen should hold 
more than 300 acres (500 jugera) of the public lands; (3) that 
payment of debts might be postponed for three years, and that 
the interest already paid should be deducted from the amount 
of the debt. 

The first measure was what the leaders, like Licinius, cared 
most for : the second and third secured the support of the masses. 
The one regarding debts had been made necessary by the dis- 
tress that followed the invasion by the Gauls. The land acts 
were not acts of confiscation, from any point of view : like the 
early attempt of Spurius Cassius (p. 255), they were a righteous 
effort to recover the people's property from wealthy patrician 
squatters. 



260 EARLY ROME 

The proposal of these reforms was followed by ten years of 
bitter wrangling. Each year the plebeians reelected Licinius 
and passed the decrees anew in the Assembly of the Tribes. 
Each time the Senate vetoed the measures. Then the tribunes 
forbade the election of magistrates for the year, and so left the 
state without regular government (though one year, during 
danger of foreign war, they patriotically permitted consuls to 
be chosen). At last the patricians tried to buy off the masses, 
by offering to yield on the matters of debts and lands if they 
would drop the demand regarding the consulship. But Licinius 
succeeded in holding his party together for the full program ; 
and, in 367, the Senate gave way and the plebeian decrees 
became law. 

Then the distinction between the classes soon died out. 
Plebeian consuls nominated plebeians for praetors and censors ; 
and, since appointments to the Senate were made from those 
who had held office, that body itself gradually became plebeian. 

The long struggle had seen some scattered acts of violence 
and many bitter crises ; but there had been no violent revolu- 
tions and no massacres, such as were common in class struggles 
in Greek cities. Except for a little political trickery now and 
then, the defeated patricians after each defeat accepted the re- 
sult in good faith. In its union of moderation and firmness, the 
contest resembles the long constitutional struggle by which 
Englishmen have won political rights from their kings and 
nobles, and the modern contest between labor and capital in 
our own country. 

For Further Reading. — Davis' Readings, II, Nos. 9 and 10 ; 
Ihne's Early Rome, 135-151, 165-190; or How and Leigh, 52-58, 
65-77, 91-94. 



-t. 



CHAPTER XXV 

ROME UNITES ITALY, 367-266 B.C. 

While Rome was most weakened by internal strife between The Gallic 
patricians and plebs, she was also obliged continually to fight i^^^sion 
for life against outside foes, — Etruscans, Sabines, Volscians. 
After the decemvir period, it is true, she gained ground rapidly 
in her foreign wars ; but in 390 B.C. she was for a while once 
more on the verge of ruin. A horde of Gauls (p. 238), who had 
overrun Etruria, defeated the Roman army in the battle of the 
Allia, twelve miles from the walls, and cut it off from the city. 
Fortunately, the barbarians squandered three days in pillage, 
and so gave time to save Rome. The sacred fire was hastily 
removed; the helpless inhabitants fled; and a small garrison, 
under the soldier Marcus Manlius (p. 256), garrisoned the Capi- 
toline citadel. Later Romans told the story that one night 
the barbarians had almost surprised even this last defense, 
but some hungry geese, kept there for religious sacrifices, 
awakened Manlius by their noisy cackling just in time for him 
to hurl back the first-comers from the walls. 

The Gauls sacked the rest of the city and held it seven Rome 
months. But their host was ravaged by the deadly malaria sacked 
of the Roman plain, and they had little skill or patience for a 
regular siege. Finally they withdrew on the payment of a 
ransom.^ 

Other states in Italy had suffered by the Gauls as much as Rome 
Rome, or more. Rome at once stood forth as the champion of ^I'^l^^^^ 
Italian civilization against the barbarians. After her own im- Italy 
mediate peril was past, she followed up the invaders of Italy in 

' Special reports : the sack of the city ; Breimus, the Gallic chief, and his 
sword at the scales; the later fiction of the Roman victory. See Davis' 
Readings, II, Nos. 12, 13. 

261 



262 



ROME UNITES ITALY 



vigorous campaigns, until they withdrew to the Po valley. In 
return, Rome seized for herself half of Etruria and much territory 
elsewhere. All these acquisitions, too, she garrisoned with 
Roman colonies. 

Next Campania was added to the Roman dominion. The 
cities of that fertile plain were being ravaged by the rude " Hill" 
Samnites, and so they appealed to Rome for aid. Rome 
repulsed the mountain tribes, and made the cities of the Cam- 
panian plain her tributaries. 

Now that the Samnites seemed no longer dangerous, the Latins 
broke into revolt. This was the great Latin War of 338 B.C. 
In the end, the rising was crushed and the Latin league dissolved. 
Its public land became Roman. Some of its cities were brought 
into the Roman state, — their inhabitants being listed as 
citizens in the Roman "tribes." The less fortunate cities 
were bound to Rome as subjects, each by its separate treaty, and 
they were allowed no intercourse with one another. 

The leadership of central Italy now lay between Rome, the 
great city-state of the lowlands, and the warlike Samnite tribes, 
which were spread widely over the southern Apennines. The 
decisive struggle between the two lasted 35 years, with brief 
truces, to 290 B.C. Early in the war (321 B.C.) the Samnites 
won an overwhelming victory. The whole Roman army was 
entrapped at the Caudine Forks in a narrow pass between two 
precipices. The Samnite leader, Pontius, made a treaty with 
the consuls by which the Romans were to withdraw all their posts 
from Samnium and to stop the war. He then let the captives 
go, after sending them " under the yoke " ; ^ but the Romans 
basely refused to abide by the treaty and held their posts. 

The Senate declared that only the Roman Assembly, 
not the consuls alone, had power to make such a treaty. 
In place of their rescued army, they delivered to the Sam- 



1 This humiliation consisted in obliging the captives to come forth one by 
one, clad only in shirts, and pass, with bowed heads, between two upright 
spears upon which rested a third. 



GAULS AND SAMNITES 263 

nites the two consuls, naked and in chains, saying, through 
the herald : " These men have wronged you by promising, 
without authority, to make a treaty with you. Therefore 
we hand them over to you." Then one of the consuls (who 
is said to have suggested the whole plan) pushed against 
the Roman herald, and said, "I am now a Samnite, and, 
by striking the Roman herald, I have given the Romans the 
right to make war upon the Samnites." The Romans pre- 
tended that these forms released them from all obligation. 

Then the Samnites built up a great alliance, which soon came Mistress 

to contain nearly all the states of Italy, together with the Cisal- ° *^ ^ 

pine Gauls. But Rome's chains of fortress colonies held fast, 

delaying her enemies ; and, using to the full the advantage 

of her central position, 

she beat her foes, one by 

one, before they could unite 

their forces. By 290 b.c. 

she had become mistress 

of all the true peninsula, 

except the Greek cities of . ^ -r, 

^ A Coin of Ptrrhus. 

the south. 

Ten years later began the last great war for territory in War with 
Italy. The Greek cities at this moment were harassed by neigh- ^" "^ 
boring mountaineers, and they called in Roman aid, as Cam- 
pania had done sixty years before. Thus Roman lordship 
became established throughout the south, except in Tarentum. 
That great city wished to keep her independence, and sought 
help from Pyrrhus, the chivalrous king of Epirus (p. 218). 

Pyrrhus was one of the most remarkable of the Greek mili- 
tary adventurers who arose after the death of Alexander. He 
came to Italy with a great armament and with vast designs. 
He hoped to unite the Greek cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily, 
and then to subdue Carthage, the ancient enemy of Hellenes 
in the West. He knew little of Rome ; but at the call of Taren- 
tum he found himself engaged as a Greek champion with this 




264 ROME UNITES ITALY 

new power. He won some victories, chiefly through his ele- 
phants, which the Romans had never before encountered. Then 
most of southern Italy deserted Rome to join him ; but, anxious 
to carry out. his wider plans, he offered a favorable peace. 
Under the leadership of an aged and blind senator, Appius 
Claudius, defeated Rome answered haughtily that she would 
treat with no invader while he stood upon Italian soil. 

Pyrrhus chafed at the delay, and finally hurried off to Sicily, 
leaving his victory incomplete. The steady Roman advance 
called him back, and a great Roman victory at Beneventum 
(275 B.C.) ruined his dream of empire and gave Rome that 
sovereignty of Italy which she had claimed so resolutely. In 
266, she rounded off her work by conquering that part of Cisal- 
pine Gaul which lay south of the Po. 

The internal strife between classes in Rome had closed in 367 
(j). 260). That strife had fused patricians and plebeians into one 
Roman people. Then that Roman people at once turned to unite 
Italy — and completed the task in just a century, 367-266 B.C. 

For Further Reading. — Davis' Readings, II, Nos. 13-15 ; and 
Pelham's Outlines, 68-97. 

Exercise. — (1) Review the growth of Rome, 510-266 B.C., by 
catchwords (see p. 151), with the important dates. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

UNITED ITALY UNDER ROMAN RULE, AFTER 266 B.C. 

Italy now contained some 5,000,000 people. More than a 
fourth of these (some 1,400,000) were Roman citizens. The rest 
were subjects, outside the Roman state. These figures do not 
include slaves ; but there were not yet many slaves in Italy. 

ROMAN CITIZENS 

The majority of Roman citizens no longer lived at Rome. Classes of 
Large parts of Latium and Etruria and Campania had become '^it^^^'^s 
"suburbs" of Rome; and other towns of Roman citizens were 
found in distant parts of Italy. There were now three classes 
of citizens : (1) the inhabitants of Rome itself ; (2) members of 
Roman colonies; and (3) members of Roman municipia. 

From an early date (p. 244) Rome had planted colonies of her Roman 
citizens about the central city as military posts. The colonists 
and their descendants kept all the rights of citizens. Each 
colony had control over its local affairs in an Assembly of its 
own; but, in order to vote upon matters that concerned the 
whole Roman state, the colonists had to come to Rome at the 
meeting of the Assembly there. This, of course, was usually 
impossible. Representative government had not been worked out; 
and of course it was not possible for all the people of a large state 
to have an equal opportunity to attend meetings of the Assembly 
and to take part in political affairs. 

Rome ruled most of her conquests as subject communities. Municipia 
These we shall study presently (p. 266). But there were other 
conquered towns, — especially the Latin and Sabine towns, — 
which she incorporated into the state in full equality. A town so 
annexed to the Roman state was called a municipium. As in 

265 



266 



ROMAN CITIZENS 



a Roman colony, the inhabitants managed their own local af- 
fairs, and, by coming to Rome, they could vote in the Assembly 
of the Tribes upon all Roman and imperial questions. The 
7riu7iicipia and the colonies differed chiefly in the matter of origin. 

The municipia represent a political advance, — a new con- 
tribution to empire-making. Athens had had cleruchies corre- 
sponding to the Roman colonies (pp. 123, 163), but she had never 
learned to give citizenship to conquered states. Rome, by 266 
B.C., had a " citizen" body five times as large as Athens ever had. 

To suit this expansion of the state, the twenty-one Roman 
"tribes" (p. 257) were increased gradually to thirty-five, — 
four in the city, the rest in adjoining districts. At first these 
were real divisions of territory. At the point we have reached, 
however, this was no longer true. A man, once enrolled in a 
given tribe, remained a member, no matter where he lived, 
and his son after him; and as new communities were given 
citizenship, they were enrolled in the old thirty-five tribes, — some- 
times whole new municipia, far apart, in the same tribe. Each 
tribe kept its one vote in the Assembly. 

Rome and her citizens owned directly one third the land of 
Italy. All Roman citizens, too, had certain valued rights. 
Under the head of private rights, they might (1) acquire prop- 
erty and (2) intermarry in any of Rome's possessions. Their 
public rights included the right (1) to vote in the Assembly 
of the Tribes, (2) to hold any office, and (3) to appeal to the 
Assembly if condemned to death or to bodily punishment. 

In return for these privileges, the citizens furnished half the 
army of Italy and paid all the direct taxes. 



ITALIAN SUBJECTS 

Outside the Roman state was subject-Italy, in three main 
classes, Latin Colonies, Prefectures, and "Allies" Highest 
in privilege among these stood the Latins. This name did not 
apply now to the old Latin towns (nearly all of which had become 
municipia), but to thirty-five colonies of a new kind, sent out by 
Rome {after 338) far beyond Latium. 



CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS 267 

These colonists were not granted citizenship, as were, the 
Roman colonies, but only the Latin right, based on the rights 
enjoyed by the towns of the Latin Confederacy under an 
ancient alliance with Rome. That is, their citizens had the 
private rights of Romans ; and they might acquire full public 
rights also, and become Roman citizens in all respects, by remov- 
ing to Rome and enrolling in one of the tribes. In local affairs, 
like the Roman colonies and the municipia, the Latin colonies 
had full self-government; but they could not make war or coin 
money. The poorer landless citizens of Rome could well afford 
the slight sacrifice of citizenship that came from joining one of 
these colonies, in return for the gain they secured as the aris- 
tocracy of a new settlement. 

Most numerous of all the inhabitants of Italy stood the mass The 
of subject Greeks, Italians, and Etruscans, under the general ^"^s 
name of Italian Allies. These cities differed greatly in con- 
dition among themselves. Each one was bound to Rome by 
its separate treaty, and these treaties varied widely. None of 
the "Allies" had either the private or public rights of Romans, 
and they were isolated jealously one from another; but in general 
they bore fpw burdens and enjoyed local self-government and 
Roman protection. 

The class of prefectures was the least enviable, but it was 
very small. It consisted of three or four conquered towns, 
too deep offenders to warrant them in asking either the " Latin 
right" or "alliance." They had no self-government. Alone of 
all cities in Italy, their local government was administered 
for them by prefects sent out from Rome. 

Thus Roman conquest bestowed order, tranquillity, and pros- Rome and 
perity. The calamities of great wars strike our imagination; jg^ts- 
but in all ancient history they cause infinitely less suffering than summary 
the everlasting petty wars of neighbors, with pillage and 
slaughter diffused everywhere. Roman supremacy put a stop 
to these endless and wasting feuds in Italy. 

The following table shows the gradations of Italian communi- 
ties, and the way in which one class merged into another. 



268 UNITED ITALY AFTER 266 B.C. 



full rights, but able to exercise political 
power only by coming to Rome to the 
Assembly. 



1.. Rome 
. 2. Roman 

Colonies 

and 
Municipia 

3. Latin Colonies : private rights of Roman citizens, and 
possibility of acquiring full citizenship. (A link between citizens 
and the other subjects.) 

4. "Allies": local self-government and Roman protection; 
lightly burdened, but no Roman rights. 

5. Prefectures : no self-government. 

These arrangements show two phases of the Roman genius 
for rule — one admirable and the other mean but effective. 

1. Rome grew strong first by a wise incor-poration of her con- 
quests into herself on a basis of equal rights. With this strength 
she won wider victories. And over these later subjects she 
held dominion not merely by force but by her intelligence, her 
justice, and by a marvelous toleration for local customs and 
rights. 

2. At the same time Rome sternly isolated the subject com- 
munities from one another, and took skillful advantage of 
the grades of inferiority that she had created among her de- 
pendents to foment jealousies and to play off one against another. 
Likewise, within each city, she set class against class, on the 
whole favoring an aristocratic organization. In politics as in 
war, the policy of her statesmen was "Divide and conquer." 

Thus Rome combined the imperial system of Athens (with 
even a wider citizenship) with parts of that of Sparta. The 
general result was admirable. The whole Italian stock had 
become consolidated under a leading city. But all the connecting 
lines radiated from Rome. Italy was a confederacy under a Queen- 
city. The Allies had no connection with one another except 
through the head city. Even the physical ties — the famous 
roads that marked her dominion and strengthened it — " all 
led to Rome." 



ROMAN ROADS 



269 



ROADS AND ARMY 



The Roman roads were a real part of the Roman system of Roman 
government. They were bonds of union. Rome began that ™^^^ 
sj^stem of magnificent roads in 312 B.C. by building the Via 
Appia to the new possessions in Campania. This was the 




work of the censor Appius Claudius — the man who, old and 
blind, afterward held Rome firm against Pyrrhus and haughtily 
claimed for Rome the dominion of all Italy (p. 264). Later, 
all Italy, and then the growing empire outside Italy, was 
traversed by a network of such roads. Nothing was permitted 



270 



UNITED ITALY AFTER 266 B.C. 



to obstruct their course. Mountains were tunneled ; rivers were 
bridged ; marshes were spanned for miles by viaducts of masonry. 
The construction was slow and costly. First the workmen 
removed all loose soil down to some firm strata, preferably the 
native rock. Then was laid a layer of large stones, then one 
of smaller, and at least one more of smaller ones still, — all 
bound together — some two feet in thickness — by an excel- 
lent cement. The top was then leveled carefully and paved 



HIHBmI 










^^^^^^^^KKkjs- 






^^ 1 








^^- " ] 




"^-^^^S^^^^^^^^^H 




^^S: ~ f 




*' 


i^^^K^^m 



The Appl-vn Way To-day, Bhowing the original pavement. — Prom a 
photograph. 

smoothly with huge slabs of rock fitted to one another with 
the greatest nicety. These roads made the best means of com- 
munication the world was to see until the time of railroads. 
They were so carefully constructed, too, that their remains, in 
good condition to-day, still "mark the lands where Rome has 
ruled." They were designed for military purposes ; but they 
also held Italy together socially. (Cf . p. 70, for Persian roads.) 

The army with which Rome had conquered Italy can best be 
surveyed at this point. 



THE ROMAN CAMP ^71 

Under the kings the army was similar to the old Dorian 
organization. In Italy, as in Greece, the "knights" of very 
early times had given way, before history fairly begins, to a 
dense hoplite array, usually eight deep. In Greece the next 
step was to deepen and close the ranks still further into the 
massive phalanx. In Italy, instead, they were broken up into 
three successive lines, and each line was divided further into 
small companies, forming the flexible legion. 

The companies were usually six men deep, with twenty in each 
rank ; and between each two companies there was a space, 
usually narrow but sometimes equal to the front of a company. 
Thus, if one line fell back, the companies of the line behind 
could advance through the intervals. Within a company, too, 
each soldier had about twice the space permitted in the phalanx. 
The front rank of companies contained the raw recruits. Expe- 
rienced soldiers made up the second line of companies. The 
third line contained only veterans, and was usually held in 
reserve, to deliver a de- j- , ^ - 

cisive blow at a critical 

, , , Iron Head of a Javelin. — Such a head 

moment m the battle, i was about three feet long, and it was fitted 

The arms of leo^ion ^^^o ^ wooden shaft of the same length. 

, , , ,.„ , , Each soldier carried two javelins. 

and phalanx diiiered also. 

The phalanx depended upon long spears. While it remained un- 
broken and could present its front, it was invulnerable ; but if 
disordered by uneven ground, or if taken in flank, it was doomed. 
The legion used the hurling javelin to disorder the enemy's ranks 
before immediate contact (as moderns have used musketry), 
and the famous Roman short sword for close combat (as mod- 
erns have used the bayonet). Flexibility, individuality, and 
constancy took the place of the collective lance thrust of the 
unwieldy phalanx. 

For defensive armor, a legionary wore (1) a bronze helmet; 
(2) a corselet, of interwoven leather straps, about the body, 

1 The legion usually had ten " companies " in each of its three lines. Can 
the student draw a diagram of a legion in battle array, from the description 
above ? 



272 THE ROMAN ARMY 

holding a plate of iron ; (3) a short leather skirt, strengthened 
with metal plates, hanging lower than the corselet; (4) metal 
greaves on the legs ; and (5) on the left arm, an oblong shield 
with a convex surface, to make the weapons of the enemy 
glance off. 

The legion numbered about five thousand, and was made up 
of Roman citizens. Each legion was accompanied by about 
five thousand men from the Allies. These auxiliaries served 
on the wings of the legion as light-armed troops, and they 
furnished also whatever cavalry the army had. 

The Roman camp was characteristic of a people whose 
colonies were garrisons. Where the army encamped — even if 
for only a single night — there grew up in an hour a fortified 
city, with earth walls and regular streets. This system 
allowed the Romans often " to conquer by sitting still," declin- 
ing or giving battle at their own option ; while, too, when they 
did fight, they did so "under the walls of their city," with a 
fortified and guarded refuge in their rear. The importance of 
these camps, as the sites and foundation plans of cities over 
Europe, is shown by the frequency of the Roman word castra 
(camp) in English place-names, as in Chester, Rochester, Wirh- 
chester, Dorchester, Manchester, and so on. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

GOVERNMENT OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

The officers of chief dignity in the Roman Repubhc, from The curule 
least to greatest, were : Aediles (two), with oversight over poHce °^'^^^ 
and pubHc works ; Praetors (two), with the chief judicial power ; 
Consuls (two), leaders in war and in foreign policy ; Censors 
(two) ; Dictator (one, and in critical times only). 

These five were called curule offices, because the holders, divid- 
ing among themselves the old royal power, kept the right to 
use the curule chair — the ivory "throne" of the old kings. 
There were also the two inferior aediles, the eight quaestors (in 
charge of the treasury and with some judicial power), and the 
ten tribunes. 

A new aristocracy had appeared, composed of the descendants The new 
of curule officers. Each such official, by law, handed down to 
his descendants the right to keep upon the walls of their living 
rooms the wax masks of ancestors, and to carry them in a 
public procession at the funeral of a member of the family. 
A chief part of such a funeral was an oration commemorating 
the virtues and deeds of the ancestors, whose images were pres- 
ent (Davis' Readings, II, No. 19). Families with this privilege 
were called nobles (nobiles, or "the known")- 

Before the year 300 B.C., the nobles began to be jealous of 
the admission of "new men" to their ranks; and their united 
influence soon controlled nearly all curule elections in favor of 
some member of their own order. To make this easier, they 
secured a law fixing the order in which these offices could be 
attained : no one could be elected aedile until he had held the 
quaestorship, nor praetor till he had been aedile, nor consul 
till he had been praetor. 

273 



curule 
aristocracy 



274 



GOVERNMENT OF ROMAN REPUBLIC 



Then the nobles had to watch the elections only of quaestors. 
By controlling these, they could control admission to their 
order. 1 Thus the nobles became practically an hereditary oligarchy 
of a few hundred families. And since senators had to be 
appointed from those who had held curule offices, each "noble" 
family was sure to have a senator among its near relatives, if 
not in its own home. "Nobles" became equivalent to the 
senatorial order. 

The old Assemblies continued to exist side by side; but the 
center of gravity had shifted from the centuries to the tribes. 
The Centuriate Assembly continued to elect consuls, censors, 
and praetors ; but the law-making power and the choice of all 
other officers had passed to the Tribal Assembly. Of course, 
as this change came about, the rich citizens took their place 
in this Assembly ; but in deciding the vote of a tribe, each 
member, rich or poor, counted like any other member. In 287, 
too, after a sharp clash, the people took from the Senate its power 
to veto the plebiscites of the Assembly. 

Indirectly, too, the people now elected even the Senate. 
The censors, in filling vacancies in that body, were required first 
to appoint those who had held curule offices, and commonly 
this left them little choice. 

None the less the Senate was really the guiding force in the 
government. It contained the wisdom and experience of Rome. 
The pressure of constant and dangerous wars, and the growing 
complexity of foreign relations even in peace, made it inevitable 
that this far-seeing, compact, experienced body should assume 
authority which in theory belonged to the clumsy, inexperienced 
Assembly. "Rome became a complete aristocracy with demo- 
cratic forms." 

Each magistrate expected, after his brief term of office, 
to become permanently a member of the Senate. Therefore 
he guarded its dignity and dreaded its anger. Thus, as 
the magistrate controlled the Assemblies, so the Senate con- 

• Davis' Readings, II, No. 14, and the introduction, illustrates the hostil- 
ity of the aristocrats to the " new men." 



ARISTOCRACY WITH DEMOCRATIC FORMS 275 

trolled the magistrate. No consul would think of bringing 
a law before the people without the previous approval of the 
Senate (so that indirectly that body, rather than the Assembly, 
had become the real legislature). As a last resort, it could 
usually count upon one or more of the ten tribunes, and could 
block any action it disliked by his veto. No officer would draw 
money from the treasury without the Senate's consent. It 
declared and managed wars. It received ambassadors and made 
alliances. And certainly, for over a hundred years, by its 
sagacity and energy, this "assembly of kings" ^ justified its 
usurpation, earning Mommsen's epithet, — " the foremost 
political corporation of all time." 

The greatest name in this period of Roman history is that of a demo- 

Appius Claudius, the censor of the years 312-307. The "f*^*^ 
r^^ ,. , . . anstocrat 

Claudian gens were of the proudest patrician rank, but, like 

the Valerii (p. 255), they too "loved the people well." It was 
an earlier Appius Claudius who carried through the reforms of 
the Decemvirs and was rewarded by the aristocrats with slander 
(p. 256). The later Appius, also, was reviled by Livy, who 
wrote for the aristocrats ; but, even in the story of his foes, 
he stands out as a great, progressive statesman. As censor, 
he built the fh'st Roman aqueduct, to bring pure water to 
Rome from the mountains twelve miles away, and he con- 
structed the Appian Way (p. 269), the first of the famous 
Roman roads. In order to carry through these important 
public works, he kept his office during the whole five years, 
until the next appointment,^ greatly to the wrath of the aris- 
tocracy. 

More important still were the political reforms of Appius. 
He filled the vacancies in the Senate with plebeians (the old 
distinction had not then died out), and even with the sons of 

' This was the description of the Senate which an ambassador from Pyrrhus 
(p. 264) carried back to his master. See Davis' Readings, II, No. 18. 

2 Censors were appointed each five years. Customarily, they performed 
their duties, and laid down their office, by the close of the first eighteen 
months. But there was no way to compel one to shorten his term in this way. 



276 THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

freedmen; and he gave even the landless citizens of Rome 
political power by enrolling them in the "tribes" (Davis' 
Readings, II, No. 14). 

In later life, Appius became blind. His aristocratic foes 
called this a punishment from the gods, in return for his attacks 
upon the "constitution of the fathers." But the blind old 
man, forty years after his censorship, could still dominate the 
policy of Rome upon occasion. It was he who checked the 
Senate when it was about to make peace with Pyrrhus, first 
enunciating clearly the Roman claim to supremacy in all 
Italy. Appius also was a lover of learning, and his written 
speeches and wise maxims were much quoted in later Rome. 



1 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

ROMAN SOCIETY AT ITS BEST, 367-200 B.C. 

From 367 to about 200 B.C. is the period of greatest Roman Rome's 
vigor. The old class distinctions had died out. A new aris- ^®^* ^^® 
tocracy of office was growing up, but it was still in its best age, 
its "age of service." There was soon to come a new struggle 
between rich and poor — but this had not yet begun. 

The Roman citizens, in the main, patrician or plebeian by a state 

descent, were still yeomen farmers, who worked hard and lived °^ small 

1-1 mi • 1 • • • p r^^-T 1 . .1 ^^^^ farmers 

plamly. Ihe rapid gain m territory after 367 made it possible to 

turn the city poor into landowners — in a colony if not near 

Rome. Each farmer tilled his few acres with his own hands and 

the help of his own sons. Every eighth day he came to the 

city with a load of produce for the " market," — wheat, barley, 

garden vegetables, fruit, horses, cattle, sheep, or hogs. Many 

modern garden vegetables were not yet known, and the Roman 

variety was certainly no larger than the Egyptian of a much 

earlier time (p. 29) ; but we read frequently of beans, onions, 

turnips, cabbages, and of such fruits as figs, olives, apples, plums, 

and pears. 

There was little wealth and little extreme poverty. Manius 

Curio, the conqueror of the Samnites and of Pyrrhus, was a 

peasant. Plutarch tells us that, though he had "triumphed" 

thrice, he continued to live in a cottage on a little three-acre 

plot which he tilled with his own hands. Here the Samnite 

ambassadors found him dressing turnips in the chimney corner, 

when they came to offer him a large present of gold. Curio 

refused the gift: "A man," said he, "who can be content with 

this supper hath no need of gold ; and I count it glory, not to 

277 



278 



ROMAN SOCIETY 



possess wealth, but to rule those who do." This sober history 
quite matches the more famous but less trustworthy legend of 
Cincinnatus of the fifth century, called from the plow on his 
three-acre farm to become dictator and save Rome from the 
Aequians, and returning to the plow again, all in sixteen days. 

In the city itself, as no doubt in all Italian towns, the crafts- 
men were organized in "unions" (gilds). These gilds were 
not for the purpose of raising wages, as with us, nor mainly 
for improving the character of the work, as in later centuries 
in Europe. They were associations for friendly intercourse, 
and, to some extent, for mutual helpfulness among the members 
in times of misfortune. They illustrate the extraordinary 
Roman capacity for team work, — in contrast to the individual- 
ity of Greek life. Legend tells us that King Numa organized - 
the gilds of carpenters, shoemakers, dyers, laundrymen, potters, 
coppersmiths, and flute players. Weavers and bakers were to 
appear a little later. 

Commerce (trade with other lands) paid huge profits . to those 
successful adventurers who did not too often lose vessels by ship- 
wreck or pirates. The few rich Romans long disdained the 
business for themselves; but they early began to use their 
capital in it through their slaves or former slaves, and toward 
200 B.C. their profits were building up a new class of merchants 
and money-kings. 

The oldest Roman word for money (pecunia, from which 
comes our pecuniary) came from the word for herd (pecus). 
This points to a time when payments were made chiefly in 
cattle (p. 242). About 400 B.C., rude blocks of copper were 
stamped with the figure of an ox; and before 300 B.C., under 
the influence of Magna Graecia, Rome adopted true copper 
coins in the form of circular discs. Even earlier, the Romans had 
"estimated" in copper (aes), counting by the pound weight; 
and now they made their copper coins each one twelfth of a 
pound. Such a coin was an " uncia," — one ounce (Troy weight). 
Silver was not used either for money or for household pur- 
poses until after the union of Italy. 



THE BEST PERIOD, 367-200 b.c. 279 

The family and religion as yet showed Uttle change from the Home-Ufe 
early state described in pp. 245-247. The house had added 
rooms on sides and rear, and openings for windows ; but it was 
still exceedingly simple, Hke the life within. A plain table, 
wooden couches, and a few stools and simple cooking utensils 
comprised the furniture. Artificial warmth and light was 
secured by "braziers" and lamps, like those of the Greeks 
(p. 186). The Roman took his chief meal at midday, not in 
the evening, as the Greeks did. In early times, the main food 
was a "porridge" of ground meal boiled in water. Pork, 
especially in the form of sausage, was the favorite meat. Bread, 
from ground wheat or barley, was baked in flat, round cakes. 
Water or milk was the common drink, but wine mixed with water 
was coming into general use, after the fashion of the Greeks. 
The Romans who conquered Pyrrhus were a frugal, temperate 
people. 

Dress was as simple as the food. The Roman kept the Roman 
primitive loin cloth of linen. Over this he drew a short-sleeved ^^^^^ 
woolen shirt (tunic) falling to the knees. This made the common 
dress of the house, workshop, and field. In public the Roman 
wore an outer garment — a white woolen blanket, thrown 
about him in graceful folds. This was the famous toga, 
borrowed from the old Etruscans. Women wore a long and a 
short tunic, and, for the street, a blanket-wrap. Foot-gear 
was like that of the Greeks. Stockings and hats were alike un- 
known. Women were fond of jewelry, — rings, bracelets, pins, 
and chains ; and each man wore a seal-ring. Members of the 
senatorial families wore also broad gold rings. 

Education was elementary. Until seven, the children Education 
were in the mother's care. After that age, boys went to a pri- 
vate school, taught usually by some Greek slave. As in Greece, 
the pupil was attended by a "pedagogue." He learned merely 
to read, write, and, in a limited degree, to compute with Roman 
numerals. The only textbook was the Twelve Tables, which 
were learned by heart. Physical training was found in athletic 
games in the Campus Martius (p. 243), where the young Romans 



280 



THE ROMAN REPUBLIC TO 200 B.C. 



Science and 
learning 



contended in running, wrestling, and in the use of the spear, 
sword, and javelin. 

Literature, under Greek influence, was just beginning at the 
close of the period. So, too, with art. Roads, bridges, and 
aqueducts were built in the last half of the period on a 
magnificent scale ; and the use of the round arch was so de- 
veloped that we often speak of it as "the Roman arch." 

Undue praise has been given sometimes to the stern excellence 
of early semi-barbaric Rome. The real picture is by no means 
without shadows. The Roman was abstemious, haughty, obe- 
dient to law, self -controlled ; but too often he was also coarse, 
cruel, and rapacious. The finest thing in Roman character was 
the spirit of self-immolation for Rome, — the willingness to sink 
personal or party advantage for the public weal. Next to 
this, and allied to it, is the capacity for organization, for work- 
ing together for a common end. Roman history, up to this 
point, is not the history of a few brilliant leaders : it is the story 
of a people. 



A summary: 
Rome's 
contribu- 
tions 



Rome began as a village of rude shepherds and peasants. 
We have seen that village grow into a city state and then into 
the queen city of a united Italy. During the next hundred 
years, as we shall see, Italy was to organize the fringes of the 
three continents bordering the Mediterranean into one Graeco- 
Roman society. 

But it was not Rome's genius in war, great as that was, which 
made the world Roman. It was her political wisdom and her 
organizing power. As Greece stands for art and intellectual 
culture, so Rome stands for government and law. A little later 
her poet Vergil (p. 384) wrote : . 



"Others, I grant, indeed, shall with more delicacy mold the breath- 
ing brass ; from marble draw the features to the life ; plead causes 
better ; describe with a rod the courses of the heavens, and explain 
the rising stars. To rule the nations with imperial sway be thy care, 
Roman. These shall be thy arts : to impose terms of peace, to spare 
the humbled, and to crush the proud." 



CONTRIBUTIONS: LAW AND GOVERNMENT 281 

Besides their own contributions to civilization, the Greeks 
had collected the arts and science of the older Oriental peoples. 
Rome, aside from her gift of political institutions, was to 
preserve and pass on this common treasure of mankind. The 
Roman Empire, as the historian Freeman well says, is the central 
"lake in ivhich all the streams of ancient history lose themselves, 
and which all the streams of modern history flow out of." 



CHAPTER XXIX 



THE -WINNING OF THE "WEST, 264-146 B.C. 

ROME AND CARTHAGE 

Italy in 264 B.C. was one of five great Mediterranean states, 
Alexander the Great had been dead nearly fifty years, and the 
dominion of the eastern Mediterranean world was divided 
between the three great Greek kingdoms, Syria, Egypt, and 
Macedonia, with their numerous satellites (pp. 218-219 ff.). 
In the western Mediterranean, Carthage had held undisputed 
sway. Between the three powers of the East and the single 
mistress of the West now stood forth the new state, Roman 
Italy. 

Carthage and Rome had been allied against Pyrrhus, but 
that adventurer had seen that they were natural rivals. As he 
abandoned the West, he exclaimed longingly, "How fair a 
battlefield we are leaving for the Romans and Carthaginians !" 
In less than ten years the hundred-year conflict began. 

Carthage was an ancient Phoenician colony (p. 75), on the 
finest harbor in North Africa. Her government, in form, was a 
republic, somewhat like Rome, but in reality it was a narrow 
oligarchy controlled by a few wealthy families. She was now 
at the height of her power. Polybius, the great Greek historian 
of the age, called her the richest city in the world. She had 
built up a vast empire, including North Africa, Sardinia, 
Corsica, half of Sicily, and the coasts of Spain. In Africa alone 
she ruled three hundred cities, and her territory merged into 
the desert where tributary nomads roamed. The western Medi- 
terranean she regarded as a Punic ^ lake : foreign sailors caught 

1 " Punic " is another form for " Phoenician," and is used as a shorter ad- 
jective for " Carthaginian." 

282 



FIRST WAR WITH CARTHAGE 283 

trespassing there were cast into the sea. But the Greeks of 
South Italy had traded in those waters for five hundred years ; 
and Rome, now mistress and protector of those Greek cities, was 
bound to defend their trading rights against this Carthaginian 
"closed door." 

Her Roman foes represented Carthage as wanting in honesty ; 
and with biting irony they invented the term, "Punic faith," 
as a synonym for treachery. Carthage herself is "a dumb 
actor on the stage of history." She once had poetry, oratory, 
and philosophy, but none of it escaped Roman hate, to tell us 
how Carthaginians thought and felt. Rome wrote the history; 
but, even from the Roman story, the charge of faithlessness 
and greed is most apparent against Rome. 

However, the civilization of Carthage was Oriental rather Cartha- 
than European. Her religion was the cruel and licentious wor- ^^^j^tgj. 
ship of the Phoenician Baal and Astarte. Her armies were a 
motley mass of mercenaries. And though, like the mother 
Phoenician states, she scattered wide the seeds of a material 
culture, like them also, she showed no power of assimilating 
inferior nations. The conquests of Rome were to be Roman- 
ized ; but six centuries of Punic rule had left the Berber tribes 
of Africa wholly outside Carthaginian society. 

Thus, whatever our sympathy for Carthage and her hero Oriental 
leaders, we must see that the victory of Rome was necessary for 
the welfare of the human race. The struggle was the conflict 
of Greece and Persia, repeated on a western stage. 



rather than 
European 



prize 



THE FIRST PUNIC WAR ("THE WAR FOR SICILY") 

The occasion for the First Punic War was found in Sicily. Sicily the 
Sicily is really a continuation of the Italian peninsula. It 
reaches to within ninety miles of the African coast. A sunken 
ridge on the bed of the sea shows that it once joined the two 
continents, and it still forms a stepping-stone between them. 
For this middle land, European and African struggled for 
centuries. For two hundred years now, it had been divided, 
Syracuse holding the eastern half, Carthage the western. 



284 



ROME WINS THE WEST 



While Rome was still busy with the Pyrrhic war, an event 
happened which renewed the conflict for Sicily and which was 
finally to draw Rome into the struggle as a chief actor. A band 
of Campanian mercenaries, on their way home from service under 
the tyrant of Syracuse, seized the city of Messana, murdering 
all the men and taking possession of their wives and goods. The 
robbers called themselves Mamertines ("Sons of Mars"), and 
for several years, from their walled stronghold, they ravaged 
and plundered the northeast corner of Sicily. Now, in 265, 
they were hard pressed by Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse, and 




one faction called in Carthage while another party appealed 
to Rome for protection. 

Both Syracuse and Carthage were then allies of Rome, and 
it was not easy for that state to find excuse for defending the 
murderous robbers. The desire to check Carthage and to 
extend Roman power, however, outweighed all moral considera- 
tions, anrf, in 26 If,' Roman legions for the first time crossed the 
seas. The war with Carthage that followed is known as the First 
Punic War. 

Carthage was mistress of an empire huge but scattered and 
heterogeneous. Rome was the head of a small but compact 



FIRST WAR WITH CARTHAGE 



285 



nationality. Each state ruled about 5,000,000 people. The 
strength of Carthage lay in her wealth and in her navy. • Her 
weak points were : the jealousy felt by the ruling families at 
home toward their own successful generals ; the difficulty of 
dealing with her mercenaries ; the danger of revolt among her 
Libyan subjects ; and the fact that an invading army, after one 
victory, would find no resistance outside her walls, since her jealousy 
had leveled the defenses of her tributary towns in Africa. 

Rome was strong in the patriotism and vigor of her people, 
in the discipline of her legions, and in the fidelity of her walled 
allies. Her weakness lay in the lack of a navy and in the want 



Power of 
the rival 
states 




Coin of Hiero II of Syracuse. 

of a better military system than the one of annually changing 
officers and short-term soldiers. 

The war lasted twenty-three j^ears. At first the Carthaginians Importance 
were undisputed masters of the sea. They therefore reinforced power 
their troops in Sicily at pleasure, and ravaged the coasts of Italy 
to the utter ruin of seaboard prosperity. Indeed, for a time 
they made good their warning to the Roman Senate before the 
war began, — that against their will no Roman could wash his 
hands in the sea. 

But the Romans, with sagacity and boldness, built their first Rome 
war fleet — drawing it mainly from Rome's "allies" in Magna 
Graecia — and soon met the ancient Queen of the vSeas on her 
own element. Winning command there temporarily, in 256, 
Rome invaded Africa itself. The consul Regidus won brilliant 
successes there, and even laid siege to Carthage. But, as winter 



builds 
navies 



286 



ROME WINS THE WEST 



came on, the short-term Roman armies were mostly recalled, 
according to custom, and the weak remnant was soon killed or 
captured. 

Five years later, the weary Carthaginians sent the captive 
Regulus home with offers of peace and exchange of prisoners, 
binding him by oath to return to Carthage if Rome rejected 
the terms. Roman legend tells proudly how Regulus arrived at 
Rome and advised the Senate not to make peace or to ransom 
captives who had disgraced themselves by surrender, and how 
then, despite all entreaties, he steadfastly left Rome, holding 
his eyes on the ground to avoid sight of wife and child, to return 
to Carthage and to a cruel death by torture (Davis' Readings, 
II, No. 20). 

This fine story may or may not be fact ; but the Carthaginian 
hero of the war is strictly historical. In 247, the general Flamil- 
car appeared in Sicily. He established himself with a small 
force on the summit of a rugged mountain, and from this citadel, 
with a mere handful of troops, he held large Roman armies in 
check for six years, by his remarkable skill in war. His troops 
grew their own food and forage on the barren mountain slopes ; 
and from time to time he swooped down, eagle-like, to strike 
telling blows, — earning from friend and foe the surname Barca 
(the Lightning). 

Terrible reverses befell inexperienced Rome upon the sea. In 
quick succession she lost four great fleets with large armies on 
board, mainly through lack of seamanship in her commanders. 
One sixth of her citizens had perished ; the treasury was empty ; 
and, in despair, the Senate was about to abandon the effort to 
secure the sea. In this crisis Rome was saved by the public 
spirit of private citizens. Lavish loans built and fitted out two 
hundred vessels, and this huge fleet won an overwhelming victory, 
which closed the war. 



These loans were made by "companies" of merchants and 
capitalists which had recently begun to appear in Rome (p. 309). 
No security was provided. The Republic merely promised to 



becomes 
Rome's 



FIRST WAR WITH CARTHAGE 287 

repay them when it might be able. If Rome had lost once more, 
they never would have been repaid. The whole proceeding is 
very like the way in which, in om' Civil War, after Bull Run, 
our Northern banking syndicates loaned vast sums to the 
government, without security, to save the Union. 

Carthage could no longer reinforce her armies in Sicily. Sicily 
Moreover, she was weary of the war and of the losses to her 
commerce ; and, in 341, she sued for peace. To obtain it, she 
withdrew from Sicily and paid a heavy war indemnity. Hiero, 
who after the first years of the war had become a faithful ally 
of Rome, remained master of Syracuse. The rest of Sicily 
passed under the rule of Rome. 

Sagacious Romans looked forward to another struggle with Sardinia 
Carthage. That conflict, however, did not come for twenty- 
three years. Meantime, Rome pushed wider the borders of Italy. 
By a base mingling of treachery and violence, she seized Sardinia 
and Corsica from war-weary Carthage — making the Tyr- 
rhenian sea a Roman lake ; and, provoked by Illyrian pirates, 
she established order in all the coasts of the Adriatic, making 
that sea also a Roman waterway. 

Still more important was an advance on the north. Rome 
had begun to plant colonies on the border of Cisalpine Gaul 
(p. 264). The Gauls were alarmed and angered, and, in 225, for 
the last time they threatened Italy. They penetrated to within 
three days' march of Rome ; but Italian patriotism rallied around 
the endangered capital, and the barbarians were crushed. By 
222, all Cisalpine Gaul had become a Roman possession, 
garrisoned by numerous colonies and traversed by a great 
military road. At last Rome had pushed her northern boundary 
from the low Apennines to the great crescent wall of the Alps. 

In organizing her new conquests, Rome was for a time less The system 
successful. All her conquests since the war with Pyrrhus — Cisal- 
pine Gaul as truly as the islands — were looked upon as outside 
of Italy (p. 237). Their distance seemed to Rome to forbid 
for these districts the liberal government given to the "allies" 



288 



ROME WINS THE WEST 



in Italy. Rome failed at this point to invent a new form of 
government, and she fell back upon the poorest sort of govern- 
ment she had ever used. All the vast new acquisitions she ruled 
henceforth much as she had ruled the three or four little pre- 
fectures in Italy. Two additional praetors, it was decided, 
should be elected each year, — one to rule Sicily, the other 
for Sardinia and Corsica. The two governments received the 
name of provinces. 



SECOND PUNIC WAR ("THE WAR FOR SPAIN") 

Rome's policy of "blunder and plunder" in seizing Sardinia 
gave Carthage excuse enough to renew the contest if she could 
find leaders and resources. These were both furnished by the 
Barca family. 

From Rome's high-handed treachery in Sardinia, Hamilcar 
Barca (p. 286) imbibed a deathless hatred for that state ; and 
immediately he began to prepare for another conflict. To 
offset the loss of the great Mediterranean islands, he sought to 
extend Carthaginian dominion over Spain. The mines of that 
country, he saw, would furnish the needful wealth ; and its 
hardy tribes, when disciplined, would make an infantry which 
might meet even the legions of Rome. 

When Hamilcar was about to cross to Spain, in 236, he swore 
his son Hannibal at the altar to eternal hostility to Rome. 
Hannibal was then a boy of nine years. He followed Hamilcar 
to the wars, and, as a youth, became a dashing cavalry officer and 
the idol of the soldiery. He used his camp leisure to store his 
mind with the culture of Greece. At twenty-six he succeeded 
to the command in Spain, where he had already won the devo- 
tion and love of his fickle, mercenary troops. The Second 
Punic War takes its keenest interest from his dazzling career. 
The Romans called that struggle the "War with Hannibal." 

Hamilcar had made the rich south of Spain a Carthaginian 
province. Hannibal rapidly carried the frontier to the Ebro, 
collected a magnificent army of over a hundred thousand men, 
and .besieged Saguntum, an ancient Greek colony near the east 



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THE MEDITERRANEAN LANDS 

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SECOND PUNIC WAR 




SCALE OF MILES 



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Roman Possessions and Allies 
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Hannibal's Route * 



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m of the Seleucidae had 
sater extent to the East 
shown on this map. 



THE "WAR WITH HANNIBAL" 



289 



coast. Fearing Carthaginian advance, Saguntum had already 
sought Roman alliance ; and now Rome, in alarm and anger, 
declared war (218 B.C.). 

Rome had intended to take the offensive. Indeed, she dis- 
patched one consul in a leisurely way to Spain, and started the 
other for Africa by way of Sicily. But the audacious rapidity 
of her foe threw into confusion all her plans. In five months 
Hannibal had crossed the Pyrenees and the Rhone, fighting his 
way through the Gallic tribes ; forced the unknown passes of 
the Alps, under conditions that made it a feat paralleled only by 
Alexander's passage of the Hindukush ; and, leaving the bones 
of three fourths of his army between the Ebro and Po, startled 
Italy by appearing in Cisalpine Gaul, with 26,000 "heroic 
shadows." 

With these "emaciated scarecrows" Hannibal swiftly 
destroyed two hastily gathered Roman armies — at the Ticinus 
and at the Trebia. Then the recently pacified Gallic tribes 
rallied turbulently to swell his ranks. The next spring he 
crossed the Apennines, ambushed a Roman army of 40,000 
men, blinded with morning fog, near Lake Trasimene, and 
annihilated it, and carried fire and sword through Italy. 

Quintus Fabius Maximus was now named dictator, to save 
Rome. That wary old general adopted the wise policy of 
delay ("Fabian policy") to wear out Hannibal and gain breath- 
ing time for Rome. He would not give battle ; but he followed 
close at the Carthaginian's heels, from place to place. Even 
Hannibal could not catch Fabius unawares ; and he did not 
dare to attack the intrenched Roman camps. But he had to 
win victories to draw the Italian "Allies" from Rome, or he 
would have to flee from Italy. So far, not a city in Italy had 
opened its gates to him as a shelter. 

But in Rome many of the common people murmured im- 
patiently, nicknaming Fabius Cunctator (the Laggard). Popu- 
lar leaders, too, began to grumble that the Senate protracted 
the war in order to gain glory for the aristocratic generals ; 
and the following summer the new consuls were given 90,000 



Hannibal 

invades 

Italy 



Victories : 
Ticinus, 
Trebia, 
Trasimene 



Fabius 
dictator 



290 



ROME WINS THE WEST 



men — by far the largest army Rome had ever put in the field, 
and several times Hannibal's army — with orders to crush the 
invader. 

The result was the battle of Cannae — "a carnival of cold 
steel, a butchery, not a battle." Hannibal lost 6000 men. 
Rome lost 60,000 dead and 20,000 prisoners. A consul, a 
fourth of the senators, nearly all the officers, and over a fifth 
of the fighting population of the city perished. Hannibal 
sent home a bushel of gold rings (p. 279) from the hands of fallen 
Roman nobles. 

Even this victory yielded little fruit. Hannibal freed his 
Italian prisoners without ransom, proclaiming that he warred 
only on Rome and that he came to liberate Italy ; and the moun- 
tain tribes of the south, eager for plunder, did join him, as did 
one great Italian city, Capua. Syracuse, too, renounced its 
Roman alliance, and joined its ancient enemy Carthage. And 
three years later, a cruel Roman blunder drove some of the 
Greek towns of south Italy into Hannibal's arms. But the 
other cities — colonies, Latins, or Allies — closed their gates 
against him as resolutely as Rome itself, — and so gave mar- 
velous testimony to the excellence of Roman rule and to 
the national spirit it had fostered. 

The surviving consul, Varro, courageously set himself to re- 
organize the wreckage of his army, and he stifled a plot among 
some faint-hearted nobles in his camp to abandon Italy. Then 
he returned to Rome, expecting to face stern judges. He had 
been elected, in a bitter partisan struggle, as the champion of the 
democratic party, against the unanimous opposition of the aris- 
tocracy. Though an excellent man, he had proved utterly lack- 
ing in military talent, and his poor generalship was largely 
responsible for the disaster. At Carthage, a general, so placed, 
would have been nailed to a cross or thrown under the feet of 
enraged elephants. At Rome, faction was silenced, and the 
aristocratic Senate publicly gave thanks to the democratic 
and luckless general "because he had not despaired of the 
Republic." 



THE "WAR WITH HANNIBAL" 291 

In other ways, Rome's greatness showed grandly in that 
hour of gloom. With stern temper and splendid tenacity 
she refused even to Teceive Hannibal's envoys or to consider 
his moderate proposals for peace. Nor would she ransom 
prisoners. Much as she needed her soldiers back, she preferred 
to teach her citizens that they ought at such a time to die for 
the Republic rather than surrender. 

A third of the adult males of Italy had fallen in battle within 
three years, or were in camp, so that all industry was demoral- 
ized. Still, taxes were doubled, and the rich gave cheerfully, 
even beyond these crushing demands. The days of mourning 
for the dead were shortened. Not a man was called back 
from Sicily or Spain. Instead Rome sent out neto armies to those 
places; and, by enrolling slaves, old men, boys, and the criminals 
from the prisons (arming them with the sacred trophies in the 
temples), she managed to put two hundred and fifty thousand 
troops into the field. 

Rome learned, too, from disaster. The legions and generals " For the 
sent' to Spain, Sicily, and other distant lands were no longer ^" " 
recalled at the end of the year. They were enlisted "for the 
war." 

Hannibal was now in no peril in Italy. He could maintain Lack of 
himself there indefinitely, with his allies in the south of the concert 
peninsula. But he made no more headway. The bulk of 
Rome's "allies" held to her with steady loyalty. Hannibal 
had not force enough to capture any important walled town. 
So his only possible chances for success lay in arousing a general 
Mediterranean war against Rome, or in receiving himself strong 
reinforcements from Carthage or Spain. Philip V of Macedonia 
did ally himself with Hannibal, but he acted timidly and too 
late. Carthage showed a strange apathy when victory was 
within her grasp. She made no real attempt even to regain 
her ancient command of the sea, and so could not send troops to 
Hannibal, or defend her ally, Syracuse, from Roman vengeance. 

Meantime Rome guarded her coasts with efficient fleets and Syracuse 
transported her armies at will. Especially did she strain every pui^shed 



292 



ROME AND CARTHAGE 



nerve for success abroad, where Hannibal's superb genius could 
not act against her. Syracuse had been besieged promptly 
by land and sea, and (212 B.C.) after a three years' siege, it was 
taken by storm and, for a time, wiped from the map. Its works 
of art, accumulated through many centuries, were destroyed or 
carried away as plunder ; and the city never recovered its old 
place in culture, power, or commerce. Indeed Rome's bar- 
barous cruelty to Syracuse was due, in no small measure, to her 
greedy wish to seize for herself the rich trade of the fated city. 

The siege is memorable also for the scientific inventions of 
Archimedes (p. 233), used in the defense (Davis' Readings, II, 
No. 27). The philosopher himself was killed during the sack of 
the city. 

In Italy itself, Rome fell back upon iron constancy and stead- 
fast caution. She risked no more pitched battles with Hannibal. 
The policy of Fabius was again adopted, varied by sudden telling 
blows from the vigorous soldier, Marcellus, who was called the 
"Sword" of Rome, as Fabius was called her "Shield." The 
war became a long series of wasting sieges and marchings and 
counter marchings. Hannibal's genius shone as unsurpassed as 
ever, earning him from modern military critics the title, " Father 
of Strategy" ; but he found no more chance for dazzling victories. • 
Meantime his African and Spanish veterans died off, and slowly 
the Romans learned from him how to war. 

For thirteen years after Cannae Hannibal maintained himself 
in Italy without reinforcement in men or money, — always 
winning a battle when he could engage the enemy in the field, — 
and directing operations as best he might in Spain, Sicily, Mace- 
donia, and Africa. But it was a war waged by one supreme 
genius against the most powerful and resolute nation in the 
world. Says Dr. Davis, " The greatest viilitary genius who ever 
lived attacked the most military people which ever existed, 
and the genius was defeated after a sixteen years' war." 

One more dramatic scene marked the struggle in Italy. The 
Romans had besieged Capua. In a daring attempt to relieve 
his ally, Hannibal marched to the very walls of Rome, ravaging 



"HANNIBAL AT THE GATES" 



293 



the fields about the city. The Romans, however, were not to 
be enticed into a rash engagement, nor could the army around 
Capua be drawn from its prey. The only result of Hannibal's 
desperate stroke was the fruitless fright he gave Rome, — such 
that for generations Roman mothers stilled their children by the 
terror-bearing phrase, "Hannibal at the Gates!" Roman 
stories relate, however, that citizens were found, even in that 
hour of fear, to show a defiant confidence by buying eagerly at a 
public sale the land where the invader lay encamped. And 
even Hannibal must have felt misgivings when his scouts re- 
ported that from another gate a Roman army had just marched 
away contemptuously, with colors flying, to reinforce the Roman 
troops in Spain. 

Hannibal finally drew off, and Capua fell, — to meet a fate Capua 
more harsh even than that of Syracuse. That "second city of ^^^^ 
Italy" ceased to exist as a city. Its leading men were massa- 
cred ; most of the rest of the population were sold as slaves ; 
and colonies of Roman veterans were planted on its lands. The 
few remaining inhabitants were governed by a prefect from 
Rome. 

Hannibal's one remaining chance lay in reinforcements by Rome's 
land from his brother Hasdrubal,. whom he had left in charge ^arkest 
in Spain. But for year after year, in spite of some great vic- 
tories, Hasdrubal had been checked by the overwhelming forces 
Rome sent against him. Finally, in 208, he did elude the Roman 
Scipio. Rome's peril was never greater than when this second 
son of Barca crossed the Alps with 56,000 veteran soldiers. 
If the two Carthaginian armies joined, Hannibal could march 
at will through Italy, — and leading Latin colonies had already 
given Rome notice that they could not much longer endure 
the ravages of the war. 

Rome put forth its supreme effort, and threw 150,000 men Victory 
between the two Carthaginian armies. By chance, they cap- ^g^^m,ys 
tured a messenger from Hasdrubal to his brother, and so learned 
his plans while Hannibal was left ignorant of his approach. 
The opportunity was used to the full. The consul, Claudius 



294 



ROME WINS THE WEST 



Nero, with audacity worthy of Hannibal himself, left a small 
part of his force to deceive that leader, and hurrying northward 
with the speed of life and death, joined the other consul and 
fell upon Hasdrubal with crushing numbers at the Metaurus. 
The ghastly head of his long-expected brother, flung into his 
camp with true Roman brutality,^ was the first notice to 
Hannibal of the ruin of his cause. 

Still Hannibal remained invincible in the mountains of 
southern Italy. But Rome now carried the war into Africa. 
After Hasdrubal left Spain, Publius Cornelius Scipio, the 
Roman general there, rapidly subdued the whole peninsula, 
and, in 204, he persuaded the Senate to send him with a great 
army against Carthage itself. Two years later, to meet this 
peril, Carthage recalled Hannibal. That great leader obeyed 
sadly, "leaving the country of his enemy," says Livy, "with 
more regret than many an exile has left his own." 

The same year (202 B.C.) the struggle closed with Hannibal's 
first and only defeat, at the battle of Zama (Davis' Readings, 
n. No. 28). Carthage lay at the mercy of the victor, and sued 
for peace. She gave up Spain and the islands of the western 
Mediterranean ; surrendered her war elephants and all her 
ships of war save ten ; paid a huge war indemnity, which was 
intended to keep her poor for many years ; and became a 
dependent ally of Rome, promising to wage no war without 
Roman consent. Scipio received the proud surname Afri- 
canus. The Greek cities of the south, and the mountain tribes 
that had joined Hannibal, lost lands and privileges. And 
Cisalpine Gaul was thoroughly Romanized by many a cruel 
campaign. 



Rome had been fighting for existence, but she had won world- 
dominion. In the West no rival remained. Her subsequent 
warfare there was to be only with unorganized barbarians. In 
the East, the result showed more slowly ; but there, too, Roman 

1 On all occasions Hannibal had given chivalrous treatment and honor- 
able burial to the bodies of dead Roman generals. 



ROME MISTRESS OF THE WEST 295 

conquest was now mainly a matter of time. No civilized power 
again invaded Italy ; but, one by one, Rome absorbed into 
her dominion all the kingdoms of Alexander's realms. 

Exercise. — A Roman had at least three names. The gentile name 
was the nomen, the most important of the three ; it came in the middle. 
The third (the cognomen) marked the family. The first (praenornen) 
was the individual name (like our baptismal name). Then a Roman 
often received also a surname for some achievement or characteristic. 
Thus Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was the individual Publius of 
the Scipio family of the great Cornelian gens, surnamed Africanus for 
his conquest of Africa. The first name was often abbreviated in writ- 
ing. The most common of these abbreviations were : C. for Caius 
(Gains); Cn. for Gnaeus; L. for Lucius; M. for Marcus; P. for 
PubUus ; Q. for Quintus ; T. for Titus. 



CHAPTER XXX 



THE "WEST FROM 201 TO 146 B.C. 



SPAIN 

In Spain Rome created two new provinces. The Roman 
governors proved rapacious and incompetent; and the proud 
and warlike tribes of Spain were driven into a long war for 
independence. 

The struggle was marked by the heroic leadership of the 
Spanish patriot, Viriathus, and by contemptible Roman base- 
ness. A Roman general massacred a tribe which had submitted. 
Another general procured the assassination of Viriathus by 
hired murderers. Rome itself rejected treaties after they had 
saved Roman armies. Spanish towns, which had been cap- 
tured after gallant resistance, were wiped from the face of the 
earth, so that other towns chose wholesale suicide rather than 
surrender to Roman cruelty. 

Still, Roman conquest in the end was a blessing to Spain. 
The struggle in the most inaccessible districts went on until 
133, but long before that year the greater part of the land had 
been Romanized. Traders and speculators flocked to the sea- 
ports. For more than half a century twenty thousand soldiers 
were left under arms in the province. These legionaries, quar- 
tered in Spain for many years at a time, married Spanish wives, 
and when relieved from military service, they gladly received 
lands in Spain, as a sort of pension, and settled down in military 
colonies, to spread Roman language and customs among the 
neighboring natives. No sooner were the restless interior 
tribes fully subdued than there appeared the promise — to be 
well kept later — that Spain would become " more Roman 

296 



SPAIN ROMANIZED 297 

than Rome itself." (In this same way, settlements of Italians 
were soon spread over other provinces, as they were conquered, 
one by one, to Italianize the world, as Roman colonies had 
formerly Romanized Italy.) 

Meantime (about 188) Rome had secured a land road, through South Gaul 
southern Gaul, from Italy to Spain. This was obtained in 
the main by friendly alliance with the ancient Greek city 
Massilia; but there was also some warfare with the native 
tribes, which laid the foundations for a new Roman province 
(the modern Provence) in South Gaul in the near future. 

We have seen how the Punic wars, especially the war in Imperialism 
Spain, with campaigns lasting year after year, had changed ^^^^^^ 
the character of the Roman army. Alongside the citizen army, chiefs 
raised as before year by year for summer campaigns, there had 
grown up a professional army, which was kept under arms, far 
from Italy, for many years. 

This professional army of veterans soon came to furnish most 
of the officers for the short-term levies. And a still more im- 
portant result followed in poHtics. To call home a consul each 
year from an unfinished campaign in these distant wars was 
intolerably wasteful. So the commander's term of office was 
extended, with the title ^^roconsul, for a term of years. This 
title was often given also to the governors of provinces. The 
office was soon the most powerful one in the Republic. 

THIRD PUNIC WAR ("THE WAR FOR AFRICA") 

Even before Spain was pacified, hatred and greed had led Rome's 
Rome to seize the remaining realms of Carthage. That state ^® ^ 
was now powerless for harm. But Roman fear was cruel, and 
her commercial envy was rapacious and reckless ; and (after 
some fifty years) a long series of persecutions forced a needless 
conflict upon the unhappy Carthaginians. The Third Punic 
War was marked by black perfidy on the part of Rome and by the 
■final desperate heroism of Carthage. 

First, that city was called upon to surrender Hannibal to 



29S ROME m THE WEST 

Roman vengeance.^ Then it was vexed by constant annoy- 
ances in Africa on the part of Massinissa, Prince of Numidia. 
Massinissa had been Rome's ally in the latter part of the 
Second Punic War, and had been rewarded by new dominions 
carved out of Carthaginian territory. Now, encouraged by 
Rome, he encroached more and more, seizing piece after piece 
of the district that had been left to the vanquished city. 

Repeatedly Carthage appealed to Rome. Rome sent com- 
missioners to act as arbiters — with secret orders beforehand to 
favor Massinissa. These carried back to Rome a greater fear 
of the reviving wealth of Carthage, and told the astonished 
Roman Senate of a city with crowded streets, with treasury 
and arsenals full, and with its harbors thronged with shipping. 
One commissioner, the narrow-minded but zealous Cato, closed 
every speech in the Senate thereafter, no matter what the sub- 
ject, with the phrase " Delenda est Carthago" (Carthage must be 
blotted out). More quietly but more effectively, the Roman 
merchant class strove to the same end, to prevent Carthage from 
recovering its ancient trade in the Mediterranean. 

Carthage was cautious, and gave no handle to Roman hate ; 
but at last Massinissa pushed his seizures almost up to her gates, 
and she took up arms against his invasion. By her treaty with 
Rome she had promised to engage in no war without Roman per- 
mission ; and Rome at once snatched at the excuse to declare war. 

In vain, terrified Carthage punished her leaders and offered 
abject submission. The Roman Senate would only promise 
that the city should be left independent if it complied with the 
further demands of Rome, to be announced on African soil. 
The Roman fleet and army proceeded to Carthage, and played 
out an act of masterful treachery by successive steps. 

First, at the demand of the Roman general, Carthage sent as 
hostages to the Roman camp three hundred boys from the no- 

1 Hannibal escaped to the East. Roman petty hatred followed him from 
country, to country, untU, to avoid falling into Roman hands, he took his 
own life, " proving in a lifelong struggle with fate, that success is in no way 
necessary to greatness." 



CARTHAGE "BLOTTED OUT" 299 

blest families, amid the tears and outcries of the mothers. Then, 
on further cornmand, the city dismantled its walls and stripped 
its arsenals, sending, in long lines of wagons, to the Roman 
army 3000 catapults and 200,000 stand of arms, with vast mili- 
tary supplies. Next the shipping was all surrendered. Finally, 
now that the city was supposed to be utterly defenseless, came 
the announcement that it must be destroyed and the people 
removed to some spot ten miles inland, away from the sea from 
which, from dim antiquity, they had drawn their living. 

Despair blazed into passionate wrath, and the Carthaginians 
chose death rather than ruin and exile. Carelessly enough, 
the Roman army remained at a distance for some days. Mean- 
while the dismantled and disarmed town became one great 
workshop for war. Women gave their hair to make ropes 
for catapults ; the temples were ransacked for arms, and torn 
down for timber and metal ; and to the angry dismay of Rome, 
Carthage stood a four years' siege, holding out heroically against 
famine, pestilence, and war. 

At last the legions forced their way over the walls. For 
seven days more the fighting continued from house to house, 
until at last a miserable remnant surrendered. The commander 
at the last moment made his peace with the Roman general ; 
but his disdainful wife, taunting him from the burning temple 
roof as he knelt at Scipio's feet, slew their two boys and cast 
herself with them into the ruins. 

For many days the city was given up to pillage. Then, hy ex- Carthage 
press orders from Rome, it was burned to the ground, and its 
site was plowed up, sown to salt, and cursed (146 B.C.). What 
was left of its ancient territory was made the Roman Province 
of Africa, with the capital at Utica. 

Roman fear and Roman greed had combined to "blot out" 
Carthage. To carry out this crime fell to the lot of one of the 
purest and noblest characters Rome ever produced, — Publius 
Scipio Aemilianus, the nephew and adopted grandson of Scipio 
Africanus, known himself as Africanus the Younger. As he 
watched the smoldering ruins (they burned for seventeen days) 



blotted 

out " 



300 



ROME IN THE WEST 



with his friend Polybius the historian, Scipio spoke his fear that 
some day Rome might suffer a like fate, and he was heard to 
repeat Homer's Hnes : 

" Yet come it will, the day decreed by fate, 
The day when thou, Imperial Troy, must bend, 
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end." 

For Further Reading. — Specially recommended : Davis' Readings, 
II, Nos. 20-29 (extracts from Livy and Polybius) ; How and Leigh, 
chs. 19-22. Additional material of value and interest will be found in 
W. W. How's Hannibal, and in Plutarch's Lives ("Fabius" and "Mar- 
ceUus"). 

Review Exercise. — Catchword review of Roman expansion in the 
West from 264 to 146 b.c. 




Court or a Roman House (p. 311) — a painting by Boulanger, based 
upon study of ancient remains. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE WINNING OF THE EAST, 201-146 B.C. 

The expansion of Rome in the fifty years after the Second 
Punic War went on continuously both west and east. The 
two stories, however, had Httle connection. We have dealt 
with the West for that half century in chapter xxx. Now we 
turn to the East. 



Ever since the repulse of Pyrrhus, Rome had been drifting First war 

with 
Macedon 



into touch with the Greek kingdoms of the East. With Egypt ^ 



she had a friendly alliance and much trade. Between the First 
and the Second Punic War, too, she had chastised the formi- 
dable pirates of the Illyrian coasts, and so had come to be looked 
upon by the Greeks as the guai*dian of order. 

Further than this, Rome showed no desire to go. But, in 205, 
Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus IV of Syria tried to seize 
Egypt, left just then to a boy king. Philip had been an ally 
of Hannibal (p. 291). Egypt was an ally of Rome. Moreover, 
it was already becoming "the granary of the Mediterranean," 
and Rome could not wisely see it pass into hostile hands. 
Philip also attacked Athens, another of Rome's allies. So, as 
soon as Rome's hands were freed by the second peace with 
Carthage, the Senate persuaded the wearied Assembly to enter 
upon war with Macedonia (201-196 b.c). 

The decisive battle was fought at Cynoscephalae (Dog's 
heads), a group of low hills in Thessaly ; and the result was 
due, not to generalship, but to the fighting qualities of the 
soldiery. The two armies were of nearly equal size. They 
met in mist and rain, and the engagement was brought on by 
a chance encounter of scouting parties. The flexible legion 

301 



302 



ROME WINS THE EAST 



■proved its superiority over the unwieldy phalanx (p. 271). The 
Roman loss was 700 ; the Macedonian, 13,000. 

Macedonia sank into a second-rate power, and became a 
dependent " ally" of Rome. But Rome herself took no territory. 
Macedonia was forced to give up her possessions in Greece, 
and the Roman commander proclaimed the Greeks "free." 
The many Greek states, along with Rhodes and Pergamus 
and the other small states of Asia, became Rome's grateful 
allies. In name they were equals of Rome : in fact, they were 
Roman "protectorates.'" That is, Rome controlled all the 
foreign relations of each of them. 

Meanwhile Antiochus had been plundering Egypt's pos- 
sessions in Asia. Now he turned to seize Thrace and Greece. 
Rome sincerely dreaded a conflict with the "Great King," the 
Lord of Asia ; but she had no choice. The struggle proved easy 
and brief. In 190, Roman legions for the first time invaded 
Asia, and at Magnesia, in Lydia, they shattered the power of 
Syria. That kingdom was reduced in territory and power, 
somewhat as Macedonia had been. Rome still kept no territory 
for herself, but rewarded her allies with gifts of territory. 

Thus, in eleven years {200-190 B.C.) after the close of the 
Second Punic War, Rome had set up a virtual protectorate over all 
the realms of Alexander's successors. She had set out deliber- 
ately to conquer the West ; but toward the civilized and older 
East she long showed a modest hesitation. But the weakness 
of the degenerate Eastern states drew her on. The East had 
become an "intolerable hubbub," from which men's eyes 
turned with wonder and hope "to the stable and well-ordered 
Republic of the West." 



An interesting illustration of this feeling of the small Oriental 
States for Rome at this time is found in Jewish history. Anti- 
ochus of Syria had sought ardently to Hellenize completely 
all parts of his dominions. In Judea he felt himself thwarted 
by the strong national feeling of the people and especially by 
the Jewish religion. So, in 168 B.C., he had ordered the Jews 



"PROTECTORATES" BECOME "PROVINCES" 303 

to renounce their worship for that of the Greeks, and he even 
dedicated to Zeus the holy Temple which Solomon had built 
to Jehovah. This sacrilege drove the gallant little people into 
revolt, under the hero Judas Maccabeus. The Jewish historian 
of the time tells how this leader naturally turned his eyes 
toward Rome (1 Maccabees, viii) : 

"And Judas heard of the fame of the Romans, — that they are 
valiant men . . . and that with their friends they keep] friendship . . . 
Moreover, whomsoever they will to succor and to make kings, these 
do they make kings ; and whomsoever they will, do they depose ; and, 
for all this, none of them ever did put on a diadem, neither did they clothe 
themselves with purple, to be magnified thereby . . . and how they had 
made for themselves a Senate-House, and day by day three hundred 
men sat there in council, consulting alway for the people . . . and how 
they commit their government to one man year by year [the consuls] 
. . . and all are obedient to that one ; and neither is there envy nor 
emulation among them." 



But Rome could not stop with protectorates. They had Rome 

neither the blessings of real liberty nor the good order of true *^'^^'^g®^ 

provinces. And so gradually Rome was led to annex territory torates 

in the civilized East, as before in the barbarous West. By 146 ^^° . 

' '' provinces 

B.C. this change was well under way, — to go on for a century. 
Appetite for power grew with its exercise. A class of ambitious 
nobles craved new wars of conquest for the sake of glory and 
'power; and the growing class of merchants and money lenders 
(who now indirectly dominated the government) hungered 
raveningly for conquests in order to secure more special privileges 
in the form of trade monopolies and the management of finances 
in new provinces. Thus to extend her sway in the East, where 
at first she had hesitated so modestly, Rome sank to violence 
and perfidy as high-handed and as base as had marked her 
treatment of Carthage in the West. 

We can note here only three or four chief steps in the long 
process of Eastern annexation. 

1. Rome's gentle treatment of the Greeks after the Mace- Macedonia 
donian War (p. 302) was due to admiration for Greek civilization. 



304 ROME THE WORLD MISTRESS 

But this feeling was soon lost in contempt for Greek fickleness 
and weakness — and in greed for Greek riches. On their side, 
the Greek cities at first welcomed Rome jo^^fuUy as a guardian 
of Hellenic liberty. But arrogant Roman officials soon made 
these cities look back regretfully to the rule of Macedonia, 
which at least had had understanding and sympathy for Greek 
character. 

Perseus of Macedonia, son of Philip V, took advantage of 
this revulsion of feeling to attempt a rising against Rome ; 
but the Roman victory of Pycina (168 B.C.) closed this last 
attempt at Macedonian independence. In 146 the country 
became a Roman province. 

Plutarch (Life of Aemilius .Paulus) describes the gorgeous " triumph" 
of the Roman general on his return after Pydna. For three days a 
festal procession paraded the city, to the temple of Jupiter on the 
Capitoline. Throngs of white-robed citizens watched the procession 
from scaffolds, which had been erected for the purpose in all convenient 
places. On the first day, two hundred and fifty wagons carried by the 
statues and paintings which had been plundered from Macedonian 
cities. On the next day passed many wagons, carrying Macedonian 
standards and armor, followed by three thousand men loaded with the 
silver money and silver plate which had been secured in the booty. 
On the third day came a procession of men carrying gold spoil, followed 
by the conqueror in a splendid chariot, behind which walked the con- 
quered king with his three young children. 

Rome so filled her coffers with treasure by this plunder that the 
Republic never thereafter taxed her citizens. And besides this pubUc 
plunder, the Roman general had paid his soldiers by permitting them to 
sack seventy helpless rich cities in Epirus. The unspeakable suffering 
and misery, — the ruined lives and broken families, — in every such 
city is beyond the power of the imagination to picture. 

2. Pydna was followed by rearrangements in Greece, and the 
factions there which had sympathized with Perseus in his 
hopeless struggle were cruelly punished. Finally the Achaean 
League was goaded into open rebellion — to fall easily before 
Roman arms, in 146 B.C. Corinth had been the chief offender, 
and it was another of the commercial centers whose prosperity 
roused the envy and hatred of Roman merchants. By order of 



COMMERCIAL GREED 



305 



the Senate that city was burned and its site cursed, and its 
people murdered or sold as slaves. 

The destruction of Corinth was a greater crime than that of 
Carthage, Syracuse, or Capua, since Rome had neither fear nor 
serious cause for vengeance in excuse. The art treasures of 
Corinth, so far as preserved, became the plunder of the Roman 
state ; but much was lost. Polybius (p. 300) saw common 




Ruins at Corinth, as tliey appeared in 1905. The Roman destruction was 
so complete that the site of Corinth has yielded less to the modern ex- 
cavator than almost any other famous ancient center. The building in 
the foreground was a temple of Apollo — - the only Doric temple known 
whose columns are monoliths. In the background is the ancient citadel, 
Acrocorinth. 

soldiers playing at dice, amid the smoking ruins, on the paint- 
ings of the greatest masters. 

Equally base, though less bloody, was Rome's treatment, 
soon after, of Rhodes. That city had committed no offense ; 
she had been a most faithful and trusting friend. But Roman 
merchants looked avariciously upon her widespread com- 
merce ; and a sham excuse was seized upon greedily to rob that 
helpless friend of her territory and trade. Rome's success in 
war was equalled only by her greed and meanness. 



306 



ROME THE WORLD MISTRESS 



In 264 B.C. Rome had been one of five Great Powers (p. 282). 
By the peace of 201, after Zama, Carthage disappeared from that 
Hst. In the next fifty years Cynoscephalae, Magnesia, Pydna, 
and arrogant Roman "diplomacy" removed her other three 
rivals. In 146, Rome was the sole Great Power. Carthage 
and Macedonia were provinces. Egypt and Syria had become 
protectorates and were soon to be provinces. All the smaller 
states had been brought within the Roman " sphere of influence." 
Rome held the heritage of Alexander as well as that of Carthage. 




There remained no state able to dream of equality with her. 
The civilized world had become a Graeco-Roman World, under 
Roman sway. 

But Rome's relations with the two sections of her empire were 
widely different. In the West, Rome appeared on the stage 
as the successor of Carthage ; and to the majority of her Western 
subjects, despite terrible cruelties in war, she brought better 
order and higher civilization than they had known. The 
Western world became Latin. 

In the East, Rome appeared first as the liberator of the 
Greeks ; and to the last, the East remained Greek, not Latin, 
in language, customs, and thought. The Adriatic continued 
to divide the Latin and Greek civilizations when the two shared 
the world under the sway of Rome. 



GREEK EAST AND LATIN WEST 



307 



Review Exercises. — 1. Catchword review of Rome's progress in 
the East. 

2. Connected review of Rome's growth by large periods ; thus, — 

(1) Growth under the Kings. 

(2) Growth during the strife between patricians and plebeians, 
510-367. 

(3) Growth of united Rome (under the guidance of the Senate), 
367-146. 

3. Catchword review of the same topic — Roman expansion — 
from legendary times to 146 b.c. 

4. Catchword review of each of the three great eastern kingdoms, — 
Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, — from the Wars of the Succession (p. 218) 
to the condition of a Roman province. 

5. Make a Table of Dates in two parallel columns, to show the 
paraUehsm in time between Greek and Roman history, down to the 
merging of East and West : 



GREECE 



B.C. 




B.C. 


510 . . 


Expulsion of the Pisis- 
tratidae 


510 . 


509 . . 


CUsthenes 




500-494 . 


The Ionic revolt 


494 . 


492-479 . 


Attack by Persia and 
Carthage 




490 . . 


Marathon 


486 . 


480 . . 


Thermopylae, Salamis, 
Himera 




477 . . 


Confederacy of Delos 




461-429 . 


Leadership of Pericles 


462 . 


(Continue to 146 b.c.) 





ROME 

Legendary Expulsion of 
the Tarquins 

First secession of the 
plebs : Tribunes 



Agrarian proposal of 
Spurius Cassias 



Proposal for written laws 



CHAPTER XXXII 



CLASS STRIFE AGAIN, 146-49 B.C. 



During her wars of conquest, Rome at home sank steadily 
to lower levels in morals and in industry. The Second Punic 
War alone — the most "glorious" of her wars — cost Italy a 
million lives. These included the flower of the Roman citizens, 
— tens of thousands of high-souled youth, who, in peace, would 
have served the state through a long lifetime. The Italian race 
was made permanently poorer by that terrible hemorrhage. 

Conquest and war had hastened, too, the growth of a capitalist 
class. By I46, Rome had become the money center of the world, 
and the Via Sacra, along which the capitalistic companies had 
their chief offices, was the first "Wall Street." Regular trade 
stagnated during the wars ; but the traders eagerly sought 
irregular profits. The same merchants who had risked their 
wealth so generously to supply their country in her need after 
Cannae (p. 291), began to repay themselves, as soon as that 
peril was past, out of dishonest contracts for supplies ; and 
sometimes they insured ships, supposed to be loaded with sup- 
plies for the armies in Spain or Africa, far beyond their value, 
and then scuttled them, to collect the insurance from the govern- 
ment. Their quick-won wealth, too, led them into reckless 
speculation. 

These capitalists became known as equites, or "knights." 
They formed a new aristocracy of wealth, just below the old 
senatorial aristocracy of office and birth, and a much more 
numerous class. Very commonly they were organized in 
partnerships and stock companies ; and some of these powerful 
companies monopolized the trade in certain important com- 
modities — so as unduly to raise the price to the public. . Olive 

308 



CLASS STRIFE, 146-49 b.c. 



309 



alliance 
with the 
Senate 



oil was a necessary part of Italian food, as of Greek food, hold- 
ing much more than the place that butter does with us ; and 
it had many other uses aside from food. So, about 200 B.C., 
we find an "oil trust" at Rome; and a few years later the 
people were so distressed by a speculators' "corner" in grain 
that the government felt it necessary to prosecute certain 
"malefactors of great wealth" under an ancient law of the 
Twelve Tables against engrossing food. 

Ordinarily, however, the capitalists went their extortionate And their 
ways without hindrance or rebuke, in close alliance with the 
governing classes. True, the Senatorial families were for- 
bidden by law (in 218) to engage in foreign trade or in govern- 
ment contracts ; but this wise attempt to keep the money 
power from influencing the government failed. The capitalists 
could not place members of their own class in the Senate, so as 
directly to secure such policies as they desired ; but none the 
less, indirectly, they did come to control the government. 

This condition began with the patriotic action of the moneyed Wealth's 

men during the Second Punic War. Year bv year, during that ^^f^}^ 

^ 1/ o privileges 

desperate struggle, the Senate had to have immense sums of 
money such as the Roman treasury had never before known. 
The only way then to get such sums quickly was from these 
rising companies of capitalists. These companies met the 
need patriotically. They built the fleets and equipped the 
armies with which Hannibal was held in check. Then, in re- 
turn, when the danger was past, they demanded and obtained 
special favors. In particular, they were allowed to take for 
their own the public lands, treating the land provision of the 
Licinian laws as a dead letter. 

In many ways, too, the capitalists kept in touch with in- 
fluential individuals of the governing class. Especially did 
they lend money, perhaps without security, to ambitious 
young nobles to help them get elected to office ; and in re- 
turn they expected and received favors when these nobles 
became influential leaders at Rome or the governors of prov- 
inces abroad. A provincial governor could easily induce a 



310 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



rich city to give fat contracts to his favorite Roman syndicate ; 
or he could enable the syndicate to squeeze from a debtor city 
the last penny of extortionate interest which its government 
had carelessly or foolishly or wrongfully promised. Through 
such alliances, the Roman capitalists plundered the provinces 
even more rapaciously than they had plundered Italy. 

The syndicates were of no political party. Like "big busi- 
ness" in our own time, they sought to control or own every 
leader and party which might be able sometime to serve them. 
Moreover, small shares of the stock companies were widely 
distributed, so that the whole middle class of citizens was 
interested in everj^ prospect of enlarged dividends. Such 
citizens could be counted upon to support any project of the 
moneyed interests with their votes in the Assembly, and with 
their shoutings in the street mobs. There were many striking 
resemblances between the relation of Roman "big business" 
to the Roman state and the relation between the great corpora- 
tions and the government in our own day and country. ^ 

Ever since the war with Pyrrhus, Greek culture from Magna 
Graecia had been more and more influencing Rome. With a 
few of the better minds, like the Scipios, this softened and re- 
fined character into a lovable type ; but as a rule it merely 
veneered the native Roman coarseness and brutality. 

After the conquest of the Greek East, there was a new inflow 
of Greek culture into Italy. Greek became the fashionable 
language ; Greek marbles and pictures, plundered from Greek 
cities, adorned Roman palaces ; Greek slaves wrote plays to 
amuse Roman nobles. But Rome herself so far had not be- 
gun to produce sculptors or painters or many writers. The 
conquest of the rich East did, however, produce a vast 
change in Roman life. With the rich and the nobles, the old 
Roman simplicity gave way to sumptuous luxury. There was a 



1 In this treatment of Roman capitalism after 200 B.C., the author has 
drawn freely from two recent books of great value, — Dr. William Stearns 
Davis' Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome, and Dr. Frank Frost Abbott's 
Common People of Ancient Rome. 



ARROGANT WEALTH AND BITTER POVERTY 311 



growing display in dress and at the table, in rich draperies and 
couches and other house furnishings, and in the celebration of 
marriages, and at funerals. As the Roman Juvenal wrote later : 
" Luxury has fallen upon us — more terrible than the sword ; 
the conquered East has avenged herself by the gift of her vices." 
The economic phenomena, good and bad, that had occurred in 
the Greek world (pp. 217, 219) after the conquests of Alexander, 




Ruins of the House of a Wealthy Roman {M. Olconius) at Pompeii. — 
On the preservation of Pompeian remains, see p. 364. Note Vesuvius, 
the destroyer, in the distant background. 

were now repeated on a larger scale in Italy — with a difference : 
the coarser Roman resorted too often to tawdry display and to 
gluttony or other brutal excesses, from which the temperate Greek 
turned with disgust. 

The houses of wealthy men had come to imitate the Greek 
type. We have already noticed (p. 279) that the original 
"house" had become a central hall (atrium) with rooms on the 
sides and rear. This atrium now became a fro7tt hall, where 
the master of the house received his guests. It was shut off 



Luxury of 
the rich 



312 DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

from the street by a vestibule and porter's room. Its central 
court, open to the sky, still admitted light and air, and it now 
held a marble basin to catch the rain, and perhaps a fountain, 
surrounded by flowering shrubs. In the rear was a second 
court (peristyle), about which, as well as in the second story, 
were many rooms for the women and for household work. 

Each house had its kitchens, and several dining rooms, large 
and small, where stood tables, each surrounded on three sides 
by luxurious couches, in place of the old-fashioned hard benches. 
The Romans had now adopted the Greek practice of reclining 
at meals. Each fashionable house, too, had its bathrooms, one 
or more, and its library. The pavement of the courts, and many 
floors, were ornamented with artistic mosaic. Walls were hung 
with costly, brilliantly colored tapestries ; and ceilings were 
richly gilded. Sideboards were beautiful with vases and gold 
and silver plate ; and in various recesses stood glorious statues, 
the booty from some Hellenic city. 

Besides his town house, each rich Roman had one or more . 
pountry houses (villas), with, all the comforts of the city, — 
baths, libraries, museums, mosaic pavements, richly gilded 
ceilings, walls hung with brilliant tapestries, — while about 
the house spread park-like grounds with ornamental shrub- 
bery and playing fountains and with glorious marble forms 
gleaming through the foliage, and perhaps with fish ponds and 
vineyards. 

Commonly a villa was the center of a large farm ; and its 
magnificent luxury found a sinister contrast in the squalid huts, 
leaning against the walls of the villa grounds, in which slept the 
wretched slaves that tilled the soil and heaped up wealth for 
the noble master. Near by, in somewhat better quarters, lived 
his skilled artisans — carpenters, smiths, and bakers.. To care 
for the complex needs of his sumptuous life, too, every man of 
wealth kept troops of household slaves — who slept on the floors 
of the large halls or in the open courts. 

Alongside this private luxury, there grew the practice of 
entertaining the populace with shows. These were often con- 



ARROGANT WEALTH AND BITTER POVERTY 313 

nected with religious festivals. It was the special duty of the 
aediles to care for public entertainment, but gradually many 
candidates for popular favor began to give shows of various 
kinds. 

Among the new shows were the horrible gladiatorial games. 
These came, not from the Greek East, but from neighbors in 
Italy. They were an old Etruscan custom, and were introduced 




Remains of Part of a Roman Villa (the Library) near Tivoli. Walls 
so well preserved are not common ; but the foundations of such structures 
are scattered widely over Western and Southern Europe, and it is not 
uncommon for excavation to reveal finds of this sort even to-day. 



into Rome about the beginning of the Punic Wars. A glad- 
iatorial contest was a combat in which two men fought each 
other to the death for the amusement of the spectators. The 
practice was connected with ancient human sacrifices for the 
dead, and at Rome the first contests of this kind took place 
only at the funerals of nobles. By degrees they became the 
most common of the public amusements. A long series of com- 
bats would be given at a single exhibition, and many couples, 



314 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



armed in different ways, would engage at the same time. Some- 
times wild beasts, also, fought one another, and sometimes 
beasts fought with men. 

At first the gladiators were captives in war, and fought in 
their native fashion, for the instruction as well as the enter- 
tainment of the spectators. Later, slaves and condemned 
criminals were used. Finally this fighting became a profession. 




Theater at Pompeii. — Every Roman city had its arrep/iitheater (two 
theaters, back to back) for the celebration of shows and gladiatorial 
Cf. p. 390 for Rome itself. 



for which men prepared by careful training in gladiatorial 
schools. 

Exaggerated copies of the Greek public baths (p. 191) ap- 
peared in Rome. These became great public clubhouses, 
where the more voluptuous and more idle citizens spent many 
hours a day. Besides the various rooms for baths, — hot, 
tepid, or cold, — a bathing house had its swimming pools, 
libraries, and museums, and extensive gardens with delightful 



RUIN OF THE YEOMANRY 315 

shady walks. Before long, some of these were opened free to the 
poorer classes. 

For Rome now had a populace, — masses of hungry, unem- 
ployed men. This new class was also a new product of the 
Second Punic War. That war began the ruin of the small 
farmer in Italy. Over much of the peninsula the homesteads 
were hopelessly devastated ; and years of continuous camp life, 
with plunder for pay, corrupted the simple habits of the yeo- 
man class, so that they drifted to the city, to become a rabble. 

When the great wars were over, the rift between the new rich The hungry 
and the new poor went on widening. New conditions (now to POP*"^*^^ 
be explained) squeezed a large part of the surviving yeomanry 
off the land. The nobles, we have said, were forbidden to en- 
gage in trade ; so those of them who had wealth were eager to 
invest in land. For such investment the new provinces of- 
fered tempting chances. Rome confiscated vast tracts of land, 
and afterward sold them cheap to her own nobles ; and often the 
ruined natives were glad to sell their remaining estates for a song. 
By such means, Roman nobles became the owners of huge landed 
properties in Sicily, Spain, Africa, and soon in the East, — all 
worked by cheap slave labor, which was supplied in abundance 
by the continuous wars of conquest. 

This new landlord class then supplied the Italian cities with Ruin of 

grain from Sicilv and North Africa cheaper than the Italian *® °^^ 
o - _ .... yeomanry 

farmer could raise it on his more sterile soil. This did not hurt 
the large landlord in Italy : he turned to cattle grazing or sheep 
raising or to wine and oil culture. But the small farmer had 
no such refuge, for these other forms of industry called for large 
tracts of land and for slave labor. Ruined and dismayed, many 
of this class were ready to sell their farms ; and they found eager 
purchasers in the Roman nobles and in the new capitalists, who 
especially desired landed estates and pleasure resorts in Italy. 

Indeed, when the small farmer still hesitated to sell, the rich 
and grasping landlord sometimes had recourse to force or fraud, 
to get the coveted patch of land. This was especially true in the 
more secluded regions, where, despite all discouragements, the 



316 DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

yeomen clung stubbornly to their ancestral fields. In pathetic 
words the Latin poet Horace (p. 384) describes the violence and 
trickery used by the great man toward such helpless victims 
(Davis' Readings, II, No. 38). The yeoman's cattle died mys- 
teriously, or his growing crops were trampled into the ground 
overnight ; or constant petty annoyances wore down his spirit, 
until he would sell at the rich man's price. Redress at law, 
as in our own times, was usually too costly and too uncertain for 
a poor man in conflict with a rich one. 

In some parts of Italy, of course, especially in the north, 
many yeomen held their places. But over great districts, only 
large ranches could be seen, each with a few half-savage slave 
herdsmen and their flocks, where formerly there had nestled 
numerous cottages on small, well-tilled farms, each supporting 
its independent family. As a class, the small farmers, once the 
backbone of Italian society, had disappeared. 

What became of this dispossessed yeomanry, from whom 
formerly had come conquerors, statesmen, and dictators? 
Many had foresight and energy enough to make their way at 
once to Gaul or Spain, while their small capital lasted. To 
Italy their strength was lost. But in the semi-barbarous 
western provinces, for a century, a steady stream of sturdy 
peasant emigrants spread the old wholesome Roman civilization 
and confirmed the Roman rule, while at the same time they 
built up comfortable homes or even large fortunes for themselves. 

A whole class of people, however, could not be expected to 
leave their native land. For multitudes, lack of money, or 
sickness in the family, or other misfortune would make this 
impossible. Love of the homeland and mere habit would hold 
larger numbers. The great bulk of the ex-farmers merely 
drifted to the cities of Italy, and especially to the capital. 

If Italy had been a manufacturing country, they might 
finally have found a new kind of work in these city homes. 
But the Roman conquests in the East prevented this. In the 
Eastern provinces, manufacturing of all sorts was much more 
developed than in Italy; and now Roman merchants found it 



GROWTH OF A RABBLE 317 

cheaper to import Oriental goods than to build up a system of 
factories at home. Rome ceased to develop home resources, 
and fed upon the provinces. Some increase in simple manufac- 
tures there was, of course ; but such work was already in the 
hands mainly of skilled Oriental slaves or freedmen, of which 
an ever growing supply was brought to Rome. 

Thus the ex-farmers found no more employment in the city 
than in the country. However willing to work, there was no 
place for them in the industrial system. They soon spent the 
small sums they had received for their lands, and then they 
and their sons sank into a degraded city rabble. Hannibal 
had struck Rome a deadlier blow than he ever knew. The 
lines of an English poet, almost two thousand years later, re- 
garding similar phenomena in his own country, apply to this 
Italy : 

"111 fares the land, to hastening woes a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay ! " 

Thus Rome's wars had demoralized Roman society. They 
had corrupted the morals of the citizens, and had created ex- 
tremes of wealth and poverty. Quick-won and unlawful wealth 
lowered the moral tone still further. So did extreme poverty. 
The rugged citizen farmers who had conquered Pyrrhus were 
replaced, on one side, by an incapable, effeminate aristocracy, 
and on the other, by a mongrel mob reinforced by freed slaves. 

With this moral decline came political decay. In theory the Political 
constitution had not changed ; but really it had become a play- ®*^^^ 
thing for factions of ambitious and degenerate politicians. Old 
ideas of loyalty, obedience, regard for law, self-restraint, van- 
ished. Leading statesmen disregarded all checks of the con- 
stitution, to carry a point ; and young nobles flattered, caressed, 
and bribed the populace for their votes. The Senatorial order 
shrank from a broad and wise aristocracy into a narrow, selfish, 
incompetent oligarchy, careful only of its own class interests. 
The shows expected from aediles, to entertain the populace, 
had became so costly that only the wealthiest men, or the most 
reckless gamesters, could start in politics. (Cf. p. 309.) 



318 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



Just as there was this sharper distinction among Roman 
citizens between rich and poor, so, too, there was a sharper 
hne than formerly, through all Italy, between citizens and sub- 
jects (pp. 265 ff .) . Rome ceased to take in new bodies of citizens : 
she no longer sent out Latin colonies — since the ruling class 
in Rome wished all vacant lands for themselves ; and she even 
made it harder for the Latin colonists to become citizens. This 
privilege was now permitted only to those who had held office 
in the colony. 

And not merely were the allies thus separated more sharply 
from Roman citizens : Rome began also to treat them more 
haughtily — as subjects, rather than as allies. She gave them 
a smaller share of the plunder of war than formerly, and doubled 
their share of men for the army, while Roman officials some- 
times displayed toward them a new insolence and a brutal 
cruelty. In one town the city consul was stripped and scourged 
because the peevish wife of a Roman magistrate felt aggrieved 
that the public baths were not vacated for her use quickly 
enough. In another, a young Roman idler, looking on languidly 
from his litter, caused a free herdsman to be whipped to death 
for a light jest at his expense. Such tyranny was a poor return 
for the Italian loyalty that had saved Rome from Hannibal; 
and it was the harder to bear because, more than Rome, the 
Italian towns had kept their old customs and old virtues. 

And worse than the distinction between rich and poor in Rome, 
or between citizens and subjects in Italy, was the distinction 
between Italy and the provinces. " Italy was to rule and feast : 
the provinces were to obey and pay." To be sure, the Roman 
administration at first was more honest and capable than Car- 
thaginian or Greek. But irresponsible power bred recklessness 
and corruption ; and before the year 100 it had become doubtful 
for a while whether the world had gained by the fall of Carthage. 

The special marks of a province were : payment of taxes ^ 
in money or grain ; and the absolute rule of a Roman governor. 

"As in Italy itself , a province had various grades of cities, and some of 
these cities in name were independent " allies," exempt at least from taxes. 



TYRANNY TO SUBJECTS 



319 



1. The Senate fixed at will the amount that each province Taxes 
must pay. Then it " farmed out " the collection of this revenue, ^^^^^^ 
at public auction, usually to some company of Roman capital- 
ists. The "contractor," or "farmer," paid down a lump sum, 
and had for himself all that he could squeeze from the province 
above that sum. This arrangement constantly tempted the 
contractor to extortion, and encouraged his agents in theft — 
all at the expense of the helpless provincials. Perhaps the 
Senate had decreed that the contractor should never take more 
than a tenth of a husbandman's grain ; but if he did seize twice 
that amount it would afterwards be almost impossible to prove 
the fact — especially when the only judge was the Roman 
governor who often received part of the plunder. The whole 
Corrupt and tyrannical system was like that by which Turkey 
in our day has ground down her Christian provinces. 

Everything tended to make the governor a tyrant. He had Despotic 
Roman soldiers to back up any command. There was no ap- sovemoTs 
peal from his decrees. He had no colleague and no tribune 
to veto his acts. The persons of the provincials were at his 
raercy,^ and of course their property was. He was appointed 
by the Senate from those nobles who had just held consulships 
or praetorships : that is, he must have passed through the whole 
series of curule offices (p. 273) without pay and at vast expense ; 
and commonly he expected to get a province to plunder, to 
repay himself or his creditors for this earlier outlay. In short, 
the Senatorial oligarchy passed around the provinces among 
themselves as so much spoil. Their plunder took many forms. 
Thus, for one kind, provincial cities were ordered by Roman 
law to supply the governor's table — including all his staff. 
Under cover of this, the governor often seized priceless art 
treasures (costly vases and statues) for table ornaments, and 
brought them back with him to Rome. 



1 In Cisalpine Gaul a Roman governor beheaded a noble Gaul, a fugitive 
guest in his camp, just to gratify with the sight a worthless favorite who was 
lamenting that he had missed the gladiatorial games at Rome (Davis' Read- 
ings, II, No. 37). 



320 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



True, a governor might be brought to trial ; but only after 
his term had expired ; and only at Rome. Poor provincials, 
of course, had to endure any abuse without even seeking re- 
dress ; and in any case it was rarely possible to secure con- 
viction even of the grossest offenders. The only court for such 
trials was made up of Senators, many themselves interested in 
similar plunderings, either in person, or through a son or brother 
or cousin; and with the best of them, class spirit stood in the 
way of convicting a noble. 

Then when other means failed to secure acquittal, the culprit 
could fall back on bribery. When a certain Verres was given 
the province of Sicily for three years, Cicero tells us, he cynically 
declared it quite enough : " In the first year he could secure 
plunder for himself ; in the second for his friends ; in the third- 
for his judges." 



This new period of class struggle was to last nearly a century, 
and to end only with the coming of the Caesars — a common 
master. The strife was three-fold : in Rome, between rich and 
poor; in Italy, between Rome and the "Allies" ; in the Roman 
world, between Italy and the provinces. Everywhere, too, 
there was possible strife between masters and slaves. This 
last evil we will note briefly here before turning to a new chapter 
on class strife. 

In the closing period of the Roman Republic, there grew up 
a slavery beyond all parallel in extent and in horror. Says one 
leading authority (Mommsen), "In comparison with its abyss 
of suffering all Negro slavery [has been] but a drop in the ocean." 

In ancient times slaves were commonly not of a difPerent 
color or race from their masters, though often they did speak a 
different language. Roman slaves came in large part from the 
cultured East ; and some of them became teachers, secretaries, 
and stewards. But others came from wild barbarian tribes ; 
and the most unfortunate of these were made savage herds- 
men or branded and shackled workers, clothed in rags and 
herded at night into underground dungeons on the master's 



SLAVERY 321 

estate. The most cultured might be degraded into this class 
at the whim of a master. 

Slaves were made cheap by the wars of conquest. Later, 
to keep up the cheap supply, man hunts were organized regu- 
larly on the frontiers, and kidnappers even desolated some of 
the provinces. At the famous slave market in Delos ten 
thousand slaves were once sold in a day. 

The model Roman, Cato (p. 322), advised his countrymen to 
work slaves like cattle, selling off the old and infirm. "The 
slave," he said, "should be always workilig or sleeping." With 
brutal masters, there were of course indescribable and inhuman 
cruelties. 

There grew up a common saying, — " So many slaves, so slave wars 
many enemies." Rome was to see many terrible slave wars. ^° ^^^^^ 
The first came in 135 B.C. Seventy thousand insurgent slaves 
were masters of the rich province of Sicily for four years. They 
defeated army after army that Rome sent against them, and 
desolated the island before the rising was stamped out. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 



THE GRACCHI, 133-121 B.C. 



The evils described in the last chapter had not come upon 
Rome without being Seen by thoughtful men. One notable 
effort at reform had been made by Marcus Porcius Goto. Cato 
was a Roman of the old school, — austere, upright, energetic, 
patriotic, but coarse and narrow. From a simple Sabine 
farmer, he had risen to the highest honors of the state. He 
had been just old enough to join the army at the beginning of 
the Second Punic War, in which he fought valiantly for sixteen 
years from Trasimene to Zama ; and, half a century later, as 
we saw (p. 298), he had a chief part in bringing on the Third 
Punic War. 

Cato longed ardently to restore "the good old days" of 
Roman simplicity. As censor (195 B.C.) he tried to bring 
back those days. He repressed luxury sternly, and struck 
from the Senate some of the proudest names because of private 
vices. But he had no far-reaching views. He tried, not to 
direct the stream of change into wholesome channels, but to 
dam it. He did nothing to build up a new farming class, or 
to make the government truly represent the Roman people. 
Instead, he spent his force foolishly in fighting the new Hellenic 
culture and the rising standard of comfort. 

For a time there seemed one other chance. After 146 B.C. 
Scipio Africanus the Younger (p. 299) was the foremost man in 
Rome. He was liberal, virtuous, cultivated, and brave enough 
to defy the rabble. On occasion he could quell their hissings 
with stern contempt : — " Silence, you step-children of Italy. 
Think ye I fear those whom I myself brought in chains to 
Rome!" Many looked hopefully to him for reform. But 

322 



REFORM FAILS: THE GRACCHI 323 

brave and wise as he was, he shrank from a struggle with his 
own order. And when he laid down his censorship, he betrayed 
his despair by praying the gods, not in the usual words, to 
enlarge the glory of Rome, but to preserve the state. 

The older statesmen were too selfish, too narrow, or too timid ; 
and the great attempt at reform fell to two youths, the Gracchi 
brothers, throbbing with noble enthusiasm and with the fire 
of genius. 

Tiberius Gracchus was still under thirty at his death. He Tiberius 
was one of the brilliant circle of young Romans about Scipio. ^^^'^ 
His father had been a magnificent aristocrat. His mother, 
Cornelia, a daughter of the elder Africanus, is as famous for her 
fine culture and noble nature as for being the "Mother of the 
Gracchi." Tiberius himself was early distinguished in war and 
marked by his uprightness and energy. This was the first man 
to strike at the root of the industrial, moral, and political decay of 
Italy, by trying to rebuild the yeoman class. 

Tiberius obtained the tribuneship for the year 133, and at His pro- 
once brought forward an agrarian ^ law. It was the obsolete {"j^i^^d 
land clause of the Licinian law in a gentler but more effective reform 
form, with three provisions. 

1. Each holder of public land was to surrender all that he 
held in excess of the legal limit (cf. p. 258), receiving in return 
absolute title, to the three hundred acres left him. (This was 
generous treatment, and neither confiscation nor demagogism. 
It was further provided that an old holder might keep about 
160 acres more for each of his sons.) 

2. The land reclaimed was to be given in small holdings 
(some eighteen acres each) to poor applicants, so as to re-create 
a yeomanry. And to make the reform lasting, these holders 
and their descendants were to possess their land without right 
to sell. In return, they were to pay a small rent to the state. 

1 Agrarian refers to land, especially farm land ; from the Latin ager. 
Opponents of reform very commonly refer contemptuously to any attempt 
at social betterment as "asrarianism," 



324 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



3. To provide for changes, and to keep the law from being 
neglected, there was to be a permanent board of three commis- 
sioners to superintend the reclaiming and distributing of land. 

Gracchus urged his law with fiery eloquence : 

"The wild beasts of Italy have their dens, but the brave men who 
spill their blood for her are without homes or settled habitations. 
Their generals do but mock them when they exhort their men to fight 
for their sepulchers and the gods of their hearths ; for among such 
numbers there is perhaps not one who has an ancestral altar. The 
private soldiers fight and die to advance the luxury of the great, and 
they are called masters of the world without having a sod to call their 
own." 

The Senate of course opposed the proposal, and the wealthy 
men, who had so long enjoyed what did not belong to them, 
cried out that the measure was confiscation. Tiberius brought 
the question directly before the tribes, as he had the right to 
do; and the town tribes, and all the small farmers left in the 
rural tribes, rallied enthusiastically to his support. The Senate 
fell back upon a favorite device. It put up one of the other 
tribunes, Octavius, to forbid a vote. After many pleadings, 
Tiberius resorted to a revolutionary measure. In spite of his 
colleague's veto, he put to the Assembly the question whether 
he or Octavius should be deposed ; and when the vote was 
given unanimously against Octavius, Tiberius had him dragged 
from his seat. Then the great law was passed. 

Tiberius next proposed to extend Roman citizenship to all 
Italy. The Senate fell back upon an ancient cry : it accused 
him of trying to make himself king (p. 255), and threatened to 
try him at the end of his term. To complete his work, and to 
save himself, Gracchus asked for reelection. The first two 
tribes voted for him, and then the Senate, having failed in other 
methods, declared his candidacy illegal.^ The election was 
adjourned to the next day. 

Tiberius saw that he was lost. He put on mourning and 
asked the people only to protect his infant son. It was harvest 

1 On all this, cf. Beesly's The Gracchi, 33, 33, 35. 



REFORM FAILS: THE GRACCHI 325 

time, and the farmers were absent from the Assembly, which 
was left largely to the worthless city rabble. On the following 
day a tool of the Senate again forbade the election. A riot 
broke out, and the more violent of the Senators and their friends, 
charging the undecided mob, put it to flight and murdered 
Gracchus — a patriot-martyr worthy of the company of the 
Cassius, Manlius, and Maelius of earlier days. Some three 
hundred of his adherents also were killed and thrown into the 
Tiber. Rome, in all her centuries of stern, sober, patient, con- 
stitutional strife, had never witnessed such a day before. 

The Senate declared the murder an act of patriotism, and 
followed up the reformer's partisans with mock trials and perse- 
cutions, fastening one of them, says Plutarch, in a chest with 
vipers. 

But the work of Tiberius lived on. The Senate did not dare 
to interfere with the great law that had been carried. A consul 
for the year 132 inscribed on a monument, that he was the 
first who had installed farmers in place of shepherds on the 
public domains. The land commission (composed of the friends 
of Tiberius) did its work zealously, and in 125 B.C. the citizen 
list of Rome had increased by eighty thousand farmers. 

This "back to the land" movement was a vast and healthful 
reform. If it could have been kept up vigorously, it might 
have turned the dangerous rabble into sturdy husbandmen, 
and so removed Rome's chief danger. But of course to re- 
claim so much land from old holders led to many bitter dis- 
putes as to titles ; and, after a few years, the Senate took ad- 
vantage of this fact to abolish the commission. 

Immediately after this aristocratic reaction, and just nine Caius 
years after his brother's death, Caius Gracchus took up the work. 
He had been a youth when Tiberius was assassinated. Now 
he was Rome's greatest orator, — a dauntless, resolute, clear- 
sighted man, long brooding on personal revenge and on pa- 
triotic reform. Tiberius, he declared, appeared to him in a 
dream to call him to his task: "Why do you hesitate? You 



Gracchus 



326 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



cannot escape your doom and mine — to live for the people 
and to die for them !" A recently discovered letter from Cor- 
nelia indicates, too, that his mother urged him on. 

First Gracchus sought to win political allies. He gained 
the favor of the equites by getting them the control of the law 
courts (in place of the former senatorial control) ; and the city 
mob he secured by a corn law providing for the sale of grain to 
the poor in the capital at half the regular market price (the 
other half to be made up from the public treasury). Perhaps 
he regarded this as a necessary poor-law, and as compensation 
for the public lands that still remained in the hands of the 
wealthy. It did not pauperize the poor, since such distribu- 
tions by private patrons (especially by office-seekers) were 
already customary on a vast scale. It simply took this charity 
into the hands of the state. If Gracchus' other measures could 
have been carried through, the need for such temporary charity 
would have been removed. But, however well meant, this 
measure certainly introduced a vicious system of legislative 
bribery where in the end the well-meaning patriot was sure to 
be outbidden by the reckless demagogue. For the moment, 
however, it won the Assembly. 

Caius then entered upon the work of reform. The land com- 
mission was reestablished, and its work was extended to the 
founding of Roman colonies in distant parts of Italy. Still more 
important, — Caius introduced the plan of Roman colonization out- 
side Italy. He sent six thousand colonists from Rome and other 
Italian towns to the waste site of Carthage ; and he planned 
other such foundations. The colonists were to keep full Roman 
citizenship. 

If this statesmanlike measure had been allowed to work, it 
would not only have provided for the landless poor of Italy : it 
would also have Romanized the provinces rapidly, and would 
have broken down the unhappy distinctions between them and 
Italy. 

Then Caius turned to attack senatorial government. To a 
great degree he drew all authority into his own hands. By 



REFORM FAILS: THE GRACCHI 327 

various laws he took away power from the Senate, and himself Caius' 
ruled in its place. He had tried to provide against his brother's '^l^^***"'' 
fate by a law expressly legalizing reelection to the tribuneship, 
and he served two terms, virtually as dictator. 

"With unrivaled activity," says Mommsen, "he concentrated the 
most varied and complicated functions in his own person. He him- 
self watched over the distribution of grain, selected jurymen, founded 
colonies in person (notwithstanding that his magistracy legally chained 
him to the city) , regulated highways and concluded business contracts, 
led .the discussions of the Senate, settled the consular elections : in 
short, he accustomed the people to the fact that one man was foremost 
in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration of the Senate 
into the shade by the vigor and dexterity of his personal rule." 

Caius also pressed earnestly for political reform outside the Attempt to 
city. He proposed, wisely and nobly, to confer full citizenship ^'^^_^^^ 
upon the Latins, and Latin rights upon all Italy. But the to the 
tribes, jealous of any extension of their privileges to others, were ^^^^ 
quite ready to desert him on these matters. The "knights" 
and the merchants, too, had grown hostile, because they hated 
to see commercial rivals like Corinth and Carthage rebuilt. 

The Senate seized its chance. It set on another tribune, 
Drusus, to outbid Caius by promises never meant to be kept. 
Drusus proposed to found twelve large colonies at once in Italy 
and to do away with the small rent paid by the new peasantry. 
There was no land for these colonies, but the mob thoughtlessly 
followed the treacherous demagogue and abandoned its true 
leader. When Gracchus stood for a third election he was de- 
feated. 

Now that he was no longer protected by the sanctity of the 
tribuneship, the nobles, headed by the consul (a ferocious 
personal enemy), were bent upon his ruin. The chance was 
soon found. The Senate tried to repeal the law for the colony 
at Carthage. This attempt caused many of the old supporters 
of Caius to come into the Assembly from the country. Re- 
membering the fate of Tiberius, some of them came in arms. 
The nobles cried out that this meant a conspiracy to overthrow 



328 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



the government. The consul called the organized senatorial 
party to arms, oflFered for the head of Gracchus its weight in 
gold {the first instance of head money in Roman civil strife), and 
charged the unorganized and unprepared crowd. A bloody 
battle followed in the streets. Gracchus, taking no part in the 
conflict himself, was slain. Three thousand of his adherents 
■jvere afterward strangled in prison. 

The victorious Senate struck hard. It resumed its sovereign 
rule. The proposed colonies were abandoned ; then the great 
land reform itself was undone : the peasants' were permitted to 
sell their land, and the commission was abolished. The old 
economic decay began again, and soon the work of the Gracchi 
was but a memory. 

Even that memory the Senate tried to erase. Men were 
forbidden to speak of the brothers, and Cornelia was not al- 
lowed to wear mourning for her sons. One lesson, however, 
had been taught. The Senate had drawn the sword. When 
next a great reformer should take up the work of the Gracchi, 
he would come as a military master, to sweep away the 
wretched oligarchy with the sword, or to receive its cringing 
submission. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 



MARIUS AND SULLA, 106-78 B.C. 



Incom- 
petence of 
the Senate 
— except to 
save its 
privileges 



{Military Rule) 

The corrupt Senate had proved able to save its own unjust 
privileges by throttling wholesome reforms at home, but at 
once it showed itself glaringly incompetent to guard the Roman 
world against outside foes. Rome had left no other state able 
to keep the seas from pirates or to protect the frontiers of the 
civilized world against barbarians. It was her plain duty 
therefore to police the Mediterranean lands herself. But 
even while she was murdering the followers of the Gracchi, 
the seas were swarming again with pirate fleets, and new bar- 
barian thunderclouds were gathering unwatched along her 
borders. These conditions hastened the coming of a military 
master. 

Jugurtha, grandnephew of Massinissa (p. 298) had made Jugurtha 
himself king of Numidia by assassinating several nearer heirs — 
who were also wards of the Roman Senate. Jugurtha was a 
barbarian, brave, crafty, cruel. The Senate sent commissioners 
to investigate : he bribed them to report favorably for him. 
Later, when Jugurtha had massacred thousands of Italians in 
Africa, the Senate sent an army against him ; but he bought off 
the general. Finally he was summoned to Rome for trial, and 
bought his acquittal from the Senate itself. No wonder that 
as he left Rome, he exclaimed contemptuously, — "A city 
for sale." 

But at last a wrathful Tribune brought these matters directly Marius 
before the Assembly. That body ordered indignantly that the 
war be prosecuted in earnest. Under the senatorial generals 
it still dragged along for some years, but in 106, against the 

329 



330 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



will of the Senate, the Assembly chose for consul the rude 
soldier Marius (son of a Volscian day laborer) who had risen 
from the ranks to important command during the struggle. 
Marius brought the war to a successful close during his year of 
office, and his aristocratic lieutenant, Sulla, by a stroke of dar- 
ing treachery, even captured Jugurtha himself. In the gorgeous 
triumph of Marius, the captive king, with characteristic Roman 
brutality, was dragged through the streets of Rome chained to 
the general's chariot-wheel, and then thrown into an under- 
ground dungeon to starve to death. 



Meantime a storm had broken upon the northern frontier. 
The Cimhri and Teutones, two German peoples, migrating slowly 
with families, flocks, and goods, in search of new homes in the 
fertile south, had reached the passes of the Alps in the year 113. 
These new barbarians were huge, flaxen-haired, with fierce blue 
eyes, and they terrified the smaller Italians by their size, their 
terrific shouts, and their savage customs. 

A Roman consul who tried to entrap the strangers treach- 
erously was defeated and slain ; but, leaving Italy on one side 
for the time, the Germans crowded into Gaul. There they har- 
ried the native tribes at will, and, after defeating four more 
Roman armies (the last with slaughter that recalled the day 
of Cannae), they finally threatened Italy itself. At the same 
time a second Slave War had broken out in Sicily, more danger- 
ous even than the first. 

Rome had found a general none too soon. Marius was just 
finishing his work in Africa. In his absence he was reelected 
consul — despite the laws which required a candidate to ap- 
pear in person and which forbade an immediate reelection in 
any case. The Germans gave him precious time, by turning 
for two years more into Spain. This blunder saved panic- 
stricken Italy. Marius used the time in drilling troops and 
reorganizing .the army. Then, in the summer of 102, at Aquae 
Sextiae (Aix), in southern Gaul, he annihilated the two hundred 
thousand warriors of the Teutones, with all their women and 



MILITARY RULE: MARIUS— SULLA 331 

children, in a huge massacre (Davis' Readings, II, No. 41). The 
next summer he destroyed in Hke manner the vast horde of 
the Cimbri, who had penetrated to the Po. The first German 
nation to attack Rome had won graves in her soil. 

In defiance of the constitution, Marius had been reelected Marius' 
consul for five successive years. Now he was hailed "the reformer 
savior of Rome," and was once more chosen consul, though the 
danger was past. This began to look like a military monarchy. 
Perhaps it would have been well if Marius had made himself 
king. Or, better still, had he been enough of a statesman, he 
might have used his power to reform the Republic. But he 
was as incapable in peace as he was great in war. He was 
naturally the champion of the democrats ; but he looked on 
while the angry aristocrats massacred the reviving democratic 
party once more in a street war, and then fell into obscurity, in 
disgrace with both parties. 

Soon another war brought to the front another great general, 
— this time Sulla (p. 330), the champion of the aristocrats. 

There had grown up in the Senate a small progressive party The " Social 
bent upon reform. Their leader was the tribune Drusus, son 
of the Drusus who had opposed the Gracchi. In the year 91, 
this younger Drusus took up the Gracchi's work and proposed 
to extend citizenship to the Italians. The nobles murdered 
him, and carried a law threatening death to any one who 
should renew the proposal. Then the Italians rose in arms. 

Once more Rome fought for life, surrounded by a ring of foes. 
This Social War (war with the Socii, or "Allies") was as dan- 
gerous a contest as the imperial city ever waged (91-88 B.C.). 
Two things saved her. First : she divided her foes by granting 
citizenship to all who would at once lay down their arms. 
Second : Sulla showed a magnificent generalship, outshining 
Marius. 

The "Allies" were crushed, but their cause was victorious. All Italy 
When the war was over, Rome gradually incorporated into the ^^^^^^^ 
Roman state all Italy south of the Po, raising the number of state 



332 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



citizens from 400,000 to 900,000. The cities all became mu- 
nicipia, and their burgesses secured the full Roman citizenship. 

Still the tricky Senate determined to take the life out of this 
reform. They placed the new citizens — more than half of 
the whole citizen body — in only eight of the tribes, so that 
the old citizens still controlled twenty-seven of the thirty- 
five votes. 

The democratic tribune Sulpicius, a friend of Drusus, carried 
a law to remedy this injustice and to distribute the new citizens 
fairly among all the tribes. In trying to prevent this law, 
Sulla provoked a riot, from which he himself barely escaped 
with his life through the aid of his rival Marius. Just before 
this, the Senate had appointed Sulla to manage a war in the 
East. Now Sulpicius induced the tribes to give this command 
to Marius instead. 

Sulla fled to his army at Capua ; and, though all but one of 
his officers left him, he marched upon Rome. For the first time 
a Roman magistrate used a regular army to reduce the capital 
(88 B.C.). After a brief but furious resistance, the unorganized 
democrats under Marius were scattered, and Sulla became the 
military master of the city. He repealed the Sulpician laws, 
executed a few democratic leaders, set a price upon the head of 
Marius, tried to buttress the Senate by hasty laws, and then 
departed for the East, where Roman dominion was rapidly 
crumbling. With grim irony, the head of Sulpicius was set 
upon the rostrum in the Forum, whence his lips had often swayed 
the Assembly. 

On the departure of Sulla, the democratic party rallied. 
The aristocrats plotted to crush it forever ; they surrounded the 
unarmed Assembly with armed forces, and ruthlessly cut down 
ten thousand men, until the streets ran with blood. But the 
new Italian citizens and the country tribes rose to besiege the 
city. Marius, too, came back from adventurous exile,i — a 
grim, vengeful, repulsive old man, with some thousands of 
freed slaves for his bodyguard. Rome was captured; the 

1 Special report : stories of Marius' hairbreadth escapes while in exile. 



MILITARY RULE: MARIUS — SULLA 333 

gates were closed ; and for four days and nights the senatorial 
party were hunted down and butchered by the desperadoes of 
Marius, despite the indignant pleadings of other democratic 
leaders, like the generous Scrtorms. 

Marius proclaimed himself consul, without even the form of 
an election. He outlawed Sulla, repealed his legislation, and 
restored the Sulpician law regarding the Italians. In the midst 
of his orgy of triumph, Marius died. Then Sertorius with regular 
troops stamped out the band of slave assassins, and the demo- 
crats remained in peaceful control of Rome for four years, while 
Sulla was busy in the East. 

For thirty years the indolent Senate had looked on carelessly 
while danger gathered head in Asia. Finally the storm had 
burst. Pontus, Armenia, and Parthia had grown into inde- 
pendent kingdoms, each of them, for long time past, encroach- 
ing upon Rome's protectorates. At last, Mithridates VI, king 
of Pontus, suddenly seized the Roman province of Asia Minor, 
then called the "Province of Asia.''^ The people hailed him 
as a deliverer, and joined him enthusiastically to secure freedom 
from the hated extortion of Roman tax-collectors and money- 
lenders. Eighty thousand Italians, scattered through the 
province, — men, women, and children, — were massacred, al- 
most in a day, by the city mobs. Then Mithridates turned to 
Macedonia and Greece. Here, too, the people joined him 
against Rome. Athens welcomed him as a savior from Roman 
tyranny ; and twenty thousand more Italians were massacred 
in Greece and in the Aegean islands. Rome's dominion in the 
Eastern world had crumbled at a touch. 

This was the peril that had called Sulla from Rome. Out- And his 
lawed by the democrats at home, without supplies, with only ^^^^^ 
a small army, he restored Roman authority in the East in 
a series of brilliant campaigns. Then he returned, to glut his 
vengeance and to restore the nobles to power (83 B.C.). 

1 This is the sense in which the name Asia is used in the New Testament 
— as when Paul says that " all they who dwelt in Asia heard the word." 



334 DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 

Italy was almost a unit for the democrats, but Sulla's veterans 
and his military genius made him victor after a desolating two 
years' struggle. Toward the close of the war, the Samnites 
rose,, for the last time, under another Pontius, and marched 
straight upon Rome, " to burn the den of the wolves that have 
so long harried Italy." Sulla barely saved the city by a forced 
march and a desperate night-victory at the Colline Gate (map on 
p. 243). 

Sulla was now undisputed master of Rome. At his suggestion, 
the Senate declared him permanent dictator (81 B.C.). His first 
work was to crush the democratic party by systematic massacre. 
He posted lists of names publicly day by day, and invited any 
desperado to slay the proscribed men at two thousand dollars a 
head. Sulla's friends, too, were given free permission to in- 
clude private enemies in the lists. Debtors murdered their 
creditors. The wealth of the proscribed was confiscated, 
and many a man's only offense was that he owned property 
which was desired by some follower of Sulla. "Unhappy 
wretch that I am," cried one gentleman who had stepped up 
unsuspectingly to look at the list and who found his own name 
there; "my villa pursues me !" 

Sulla thought he had stamped out the embers of the Marian party. 
Only Sertorius, the noblest Roman of the age, held Spain for the 
democrats ; and the boy Julius Caesar, a nephew of Marius' wife and 
the husband of Cinna's daughter, was in hiding in the mountains. 
Sulla had had Caesar in his power and had meant to put him to death. 
Finally, at the entreaties of friends, he spared him, exclaiming, how- 
ever, "There is many a Marius hidden in that young fop." 

Sulla next set about reestablishing oligarchic rule. He en- 
larged the Senate to six hundred, and by law made all officers 
dependent upon it; and in particular the tribuneship (whence 
had come all the popular movements) was restricted. No 
tribune, it was ordered, could bring any proposal before the 
tribes, or even address them, without the Senate's permission. 

After a three years' rule, Sulla abdicated, — to go back to 
his debaucheries, and to die in peace shortly after as a private 



MILITARY RULE: MARIUS — SULLA 335 

citizen. He is a monstrous enigma in history — dauntless, " Sulla the 
crafty, treacherous, dissokite, Hcentious, refined, as capable ^0^*""^^^ 
as unscrupulous, absolutely unfeeling and selfish, and with a 
mocking cynicism that spiced his conversation and conduct. 
He called himself the favorite of the Goddess of Chance, and 
was fond of the title "Sulla the Fortunate." 

Apparently Sulla believed sincerely in senatorial govern- 
ment ; but he had striven against his age, and his work hardly 
outlived his mortal body. 

For Further Reading. — Ancient writers : Plutarch, Lives (" Ma- 
rius" and "Sulla"). Davis' Readings, II, No. 42, contains Plutarch's 
story of Sulla's massacres. 

Modern writers: Beesly, The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla; How and 
Leigh, 360-449. 



CHAPTER XXXV 



POMPEY AND CAESAR, 78-49 B.C. 

During the rule of Sulla, Spain had been the one remaining 
stronghold of the democrats. During Sulla's absence in the 
East, Sertorius (p. 334) had been sent to Spain as governor. 
He proved a great general and a wise statesman. His rule was 
gentle and just, and the Spaniards became devoted to him. 
In the few years allowed him, he did much to build up the pros- 
perity of the province and to introduce the best elements of 
Roman civilization. Aided by the natives, he easily main- 
tained himself against the generals Sulla sent against him. 

Sulla's death left one of his officers, Pompey, the leading man 
at Rome, — a capable soldier, but otherwise of mediocre 
ability, vain, sluggish, and timidly cautious. Sulla had made it 
plain that the path to the throne lay through a position as 
proconsul in a rich province for a term of years, with a war 
that would call for a large army. Pompey had not yet held 
any of the offices leading to such an appointment (p. 273) ; 
but, now he compelled the Senate to send him to Spain against 
Sertorius, with an indefinite term and absolute powers (77 B.C.). 
After some years of warfare, Sertorius was basely assassinated, 
and then Pompey quickly reduced Spain to obedience. In the 
year 71, he returned triumphantly to Italy. 

Meantime had come a terrible slave revolt in Italy, headed by 
the gallant Spartacus. Spartacus was a Thracian captive who 
had been forced to become a gladiator. With a few companions 
he escaped from the gladiatorial school at Capua and fled to the 
mountains. There he was joined by other fugitive slaves until 
he was at the head of an army of 70,000 men. For three years 
he kept the field, and repeatedly threatened Rome itself. Just 

336 



MILITARY RULE: POMPBY — CAESAR 337 

as Pompey returned to Italy, however, in 70 B.C., Spartacus' 
forces were crushed by Crassus, another of Sulla's old lieutenants ; 
but Pompey arrived in time to cut to pieces a few thousand 
fugitives and to claim a share of the credit. 

The crown was now within the reach of Pompey. He 
longed for it, but did not dare stretch out his hand to grasp 
it; and the Senate skillfully played off the two military chiefs 
against each other until they agreed to disband their armies 
simultaneously. 

But in 67, military danger called Pompey again to the front. Pompey and 
The navy of Rome had fallen to utter decay, and swarms of 
pirates terrorized the seas. They even set up a formidable state, 
with its headquarters on the rocky coasts of Cilicia, and nego- 
tiated with kings as equals. They paralyzed trade along the 
great Mediterranean highway. They even dared to ravage 
the coasts of Italy, and carry off the inhabitants for slaves. 
Finally they threatened Rome itself with starvation by cutting 
off the grain fleets. .^ 

To put down these plunderers Pompey was given supreme 
command for three years in the Mediterranean and in all its 
coasts for fifty miles inland. He received also unlimited author- 
ity over all the resources of the realm. 

Assembling vast fleets, he swept the seas in a three months' Pompey in 
campaign. Then his command was extended ifide finitely in *^® ^^^* 
order that he might carry on war against Mithridates of Pontus, 
who for several years had again been threatening Roman power 
in Asia Minor. Pompey was absent on this mission five years — 
a glorious period in his career, and one that proved the resources 
and energies of the commonwealth unexhausted, if only a 
respectable leader were found to direct them. He waged 
successful wars, crushed dangerous rebellions, conquered 
Pontus and Armenia, annexed wide provinces, and extended 
the Roman bounds to the Euphrates. He restored order, 
founded cities, and deposed and set up kings in the dependent 
states. When he returned to Italy, in 62, he was "Pompey "Pompey 
the Great," the leading figure in the world. Again the crown *^® ^"^* " 



338 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



was within his grasp. Again he let it slip, expecting it to be 
thrust upon him.^ 

During Pompey's absence three new leaders had risen to 
prominence. 

Cato the Younger, great-grandson of Cato the Censor, was a 
brave, honest, bigoted aristocrat, bent upon preserving the 
oligarchic Republic. 

Cicero, the greatest orator of Rome, was a refined scholar 
and a representative of the wealthy middle class. He desired 
reform, and at first he inclined toward the democratic party ; but, 

alarmed by their violence and 
rudeness, he finally joined the 
conservatives, in the idle hope 
of restoring the early repub- 
lican constitution. " Both," 
says a modern historian of 
Rome, "were blinded to real 
facts — Cato by his ignorance, 
Cicero by his learning." The 
third man was to tower im- 
measurably above these and 
all other Romans. 

Caius Julius Caesar was the 
chief democratic leader, and was to prove perhaps the greatest 
genius of all history. He was of an old patrician family that 
claimed divine descent through lulus (Julius), son of Aeneas (a 
prince of Troy in the fabled Trojan war end the hero of Vergil's 
Aeneid). His youth had been dissolute, but bold; and he had 
refused with quiet dignity to divorce his wife (the daughter of 
Cinna) at Sulla's order, though Pompey had not hesitated to 
obey a like command. In Pompey's absence he had served as 
quaestor and praetor, and he strove ardently to reorganize the 
democratic party. In public speeches he ventured to praise 
Marius and Cinna as champions of the people, and in the year 




Cicero. 



1 Davis' Readings, II, No. 45, gives a contemporary account of Pompey's 
conquests and of his "triumph." 



MILITARY RULE: POMPEY — CAESAR 339 

64, by a daring stroke, he again set up at the Capitol the trophies 

of Marius, which had been torn down in the rule of Sulla. 'M 

Caesar had hoped to counterbalance Pompey's power by Caesar 
securing a province in Egypt ; but a strange incident prevented. ^*^?f^ ^J.® 
One of the democratic agitators was the profligate Catiline, line's Con- 
This man organized a reckless conspiracy of bankrupt and ruined ^P"'^^y 
adventurers, like himself. He planned to murder the consuls 
and senators, confiscate the property of the rich, and make 
himself tyrant. 

This conspiracy was detected and crushed by Cicero, the 
consul (63 B.C.). The movement was not one of the demo- 
cratic party proper. It belonged to the disreputable extremists 
who always attach themselves to a liberal party ; but the 
collapse reacted upon the whole popular party, and Caesar 
necessarily laid aside his plans. The same year, his career 
seemed closed by Pompey's return, and he was glad to withdraw 
from Italy for a while to the governorship of Spain, which at 
that time had no army and was not an important province. 

The jealous and stupid Senate drove Pompey into Caesar's 
arms. It refused to give his soldiers the lands he had promised 
them for pay, and delayed even to ratify his wise political 
arrangements in the East. Pompey had disbanded his army, 
and for two years, he fretted in vain. 

Caesar seized the chance and formed a coalition between Pom- The " First 
pey, Crassus, and himself. This alliance is sometimes called .""°^7. 
the "First Triumvirate." Caesar furnished the brains for 
the alliance, and obtained the fruits. He became consul (59 
B.C.) and set about securing Pompey's measures. The Senate 
refused even to consider them. Caesar laid them directly 
before the Assembly. A tribune, of the Senate's party, inter- 
posed his veto. Caesar looked on calmly while a mob of 
Pompey's veterans drove the tribune from the Assembly. To 
delay proceedings, the other consul then announced that he 
would consult the omens. According to law, all action should 
have ceased until the result was known; but Caesar serenely 
disregarded this antiquated check, and carried the measures 



340 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



at once by the votes of the Tribes. Next he demohshed the 
jP remains of Sulla's constitution. He had stepped into the first 

\ place in Rome. 

Jaesar in At the close of his consulship, Caesar secured command of 

'^ the Gallic provinces for five years as proconsul. For the next 

ten years he abandoned Italy for the supreme work that opened 
to him beyond the Alps. He found the Province ^ threatened 
by two great invasions : the whole people of the Helvetii were 
migrating from their Alpine homes in search of more fertile 
lands ; and a great German nation, under the king Ariovistus, 
was already encamped in Gaul. The Gauls themselves were 
distracted by feuds and grievously oppressed by their dis- 
orderly chieftains. 

Caesar saw the danger and grasped the opportunity. He 
levied armies hastily, and in one summer drove back the 
Helvetii and annihilated the German invaders. Then he seized 
upon the Rhine as the proper Roman frontier, and, in a series 
of masterly campaigns, he made all Gaul Roman, extending his 
expeditions even into Britain. The story is told with incom- 
Imd the parable lucidity in his own Commentaries. Whatever we think 

*^ ^ of the morality of these conquests, they were to produce infinite 

good for mankind. Says John Fiske (an American historian) : 
" We ought to be thankful to Caesar every day that we live." 
The result of the Gallic campaigns was twofold. 

1. The wave of German invasion was again checked, until 
Roman civilization had time to do its work and to prepare 
the way for the coming Christian church. "Let the Alps 
now sink," exclaimed Cicero; "the gods raised them to shelter 
Italy from the barbarians, but they are no longer needed." 

2. A wider home for Roman civilization was won among 
fresh populations, unexhausted and vigorous. The map widened 
from the Mediterranean circle to include the shores of the North 
and Baltic seas. The land that Caesar made Roman (modern 



1 In 121 the southern part of Transalpine Gaul had been given the form 
of a province (p. 297). It was commonly known as The Province (modern 
Provence) . 



MILITARY RULE: POMPEY — CAESAR 



341 



France) was, next to Greece and Italy, to form down to the 

present time the chief instructor of Europe. _ • 

The justification of Caesar's conquests in Gaul and Brit- "^ 
ain rests upon much the same basis as does the white man's 
occupation of the American continents. The student 
should compare the Roman possessions after these conquests 
of Pompey and Caesar, east and west, with the territory as 
it stood before them. Compare the map on page 306 with 
that following page 364. 

The close of Caesar's five years in Gaul saw him easily, superior Caesar and 
to his colleagues, and able to seize power at Rome if he chose. Ponipey 
But it was never his way to leave the work in hand unfinished. 
He renewed the "triumvirate" in 55 B.C., securing the Gauls 
for five years more for himself, giving Spain to Pompey, and 
Asia to Crassus. 

Crassus soon perished in battle with the Parthians, a huge, 
barbaric empire, then reaching from the Euphrates to the 
Indus. Then it became plain that the question whether Caesar 
or Pompey was to rule at Rome could not long be postponed. 
The Senate was growing frantic with fear of Caesar and his 
victorious legions. Pompey, jealous of his more brilliant rival, 
drew nearer to the Senate again. That terrified body adopted 
him eagerly as its champion, hoping that it had found another Senate 
Sulla to check this new and greater Marius. Pompey was made ^ °p ^ 
sole consul with supreme command in Italy, and at the same time, 
his indefinite proconsular powers abroad were continued to him. 
Caesar's ofiice as proconsul was about to expire. He had 
finished his work in Gaul in the nick of time. He still shrank 
from civil war. He meant to secure the consulship for the next 
year and, in that case, he hoped to carry out reforms at Rome 
without violence. Accordingly he made offer after offer of 
conciliation and compromise. 

All his offers were rebuffed by Pompey and the Senate. 
To stand for consul, under the law, Caesar must disband his 
army and come to Rome in person. There would be an interval 



342 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC 



of some months when he would be a private citizen. The 
aristocrats boasted openly that in this helpless interval they 
would destroy him as they had the Gracchi. Caesar finally 
offered to lay down his command and disband his troops, if 
Pompey were ordered to do the same. This, too, was refused. 
Then the aristocrats carried a decree that Caesar must disband 
his troops before a certain day or be declared a public enemy. 
Two tribunes vetoed the decree, but were mobbed, and barely 
escaped to Caesar's camp in Cisalpine Gaul. 

At last the Senate had made Caesar choose between civil 
war and ruin both for himself and for all his noble hopes for the 
Roman world. He had made no preparation for war. Only 
one of his eleven legions was with him in Cisalpine Gaul ; the 
others were dispersed in distant garrisons far beyond the Alps. 
But within an hour after the arrival of the fugitives, he was 
on the march with his 5000 men. The same night he crossed 
the Rubicon — the little stream that separated his province 
from "Italy." This act was war: a proconsul was strictly 
forbidden by law to bring an army into Italy. Caesar paused 
a few moments, it is said, for the last time, when he reached the 
bank of the river at the head of his troops ; then he spurred 
forward, exclaiming, "The die is cast." 



PART V 

THE EOMAN EMPIRE (THE GEAEOO-EOMAN WOELD) 

Rome was the whole world, and all the world was Rome. 

— Spenser, Ruins of Rome. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

FOUNDING THE EMPIRE, 49-31 B.C. 
I. JULIUS CAESAR'S FIVE YEARS, 49-44 b.c. 

With audacious rapidity Caesar led his one legion directly Pharsalus 
upon the much larger forces that ponderous Pompey was 
mustering ; and in sixty days, almost without bloodshed, he was 
master of the peninsula. Pompey still controlled most of the 
empire ; but Caesar held the capital and the advantage of Italy's 
central position. 

Turning to Spain, in three months Caesar dispersed the armies 
of Pompey's lieutenants there. Then following Pompey him- 
self to Greece, in a critical campaign in 48 B.C. he became master 
of the world. The decisive battle was fought at Pharsalus in 
Thessaly. Caesar's little army had been living for weeks on 
roots and bark of trees, and it numbered less than half Pom- 
pey's well-provided troops. Pompey, too, had his choice of 
positions, and he had never been beaten in the field. It looked 
for a time as though Caesar had rashly invited ruin ; but 
from that peril he snatched overwhelming victory. 

Pompey, despite his career of unbroken success, was " formed 
for a corporal and forced to be a general." Caesar, though 
caring not at all for mere military glory, was one of the great- 
est captains of all time. And the armies differed vastly in real 
fighting power. Says an English historian : 

343 



344 FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 49-44 B.C. 

"The one host was composed in great part of a motley crowd from 
Greece and the East . . . the other was chiefly drawn from the Gallic 
populations of Italy and the West, fresh, vigorous, intelligent, and 
united in devotion and loyalty to their leader. . . . With Pompeius 
was the spirit of the past ; and his failure did but answer to the failure 
of a decaying world. With Caesar ivas the spirit of the future; and his' 
victory marks the moment when humanity could once more start 
hopefully upon a new line of progress." 

Other wars hindered the great work of reorganization. 
Egypt and Asia Minor each required a campaign. In Egypt, 
under the voluptuous queen, Cleopatra, Caesar wasted a few 
months ; but he atoned for this delay by his swift prosecution 
of the war in Asia against the son of Mithridates. This was 
the campaign that Caesar reported pithily — and rather boast- 
fully — to his lieutenants in Rome, — "I came, I saw, I con- 
quered." Meantime, Cato and the senatorial party had raised 
troops in Africa. Caesar crushed them at Thapsus. Some- 
what later, Pompey's sons and the last remnants of their party 
were overthrown in Spain at Munda. 

Cato, stern Republican that he was, committed suicide 
at Utica, after Thapsus, unwilling to survive the common- 
wealth. His death was admired by the ancient world, 
and cast an undeserved halo about the expiring "Re- 
publican" cause. The story may be read in Plutarch's 
Life of Cato. 



Apart from these necessary military operations, Caesar's 
first work was to reconcile Ital^^ to his government. The 
wealthy classes there had trembled when he crossed the Rubi- 
con, expecting new Marian massacres. But Caesar maintained 
strict order, guarded property carefully, and punished no 
political opponent who laid down arms. 

Only one of his soldiers had refused to follow him when he 
decided upon civil war. Caesar sent all this officer's property 
after him to Pompey's camp. He continued the same policy, 
too, toward the nobles who left Italy to join Pompey. On the 



JULIUS CAESAR'S FIVE YEARS 345 

field of victory, he checked the vengeance of his soldiers, call- 
ing upon them to remember that the enemy were their fel- 
low-citizens ; and, after Pharsalus, he employed in the ■public 
service any Roman of ability, without regard to the side he had 
fought on. 

In Gaul, Caesar's warfare had been largely of the cruel kind 
so common in Roman annals ; but his clemency in the civil ' 
war was without example. It brought its proper fruit : almost 
at once all classes, except a few extremists, became heartily 
reconciled to his monarchic rule. 

From the time of the Gracchi, Rome had been moving toward Caesar's 
monarchy. Owing to the corruption of the populace in the capital, ^^^H^J-^ 
the tremendous power of the tribune had grown occasionally of long- 
into a virtual dictatorship, as with Caius Gracchus and Sul- con'^jJi^ng 
picius. Owing to the gr Giving military danger on the frontiers, 
the mighty authority of a proconsul of a single province was 
sometimes extended, by special decrees, over vaster areas for 
indefinite time, as with Marius, Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. 
To make a monarch needed but to unite these two powers, at home 
and abroad, in one person. 

This was what Caesar did. He preserved most of the old 
Republican forms. The Senate debated, and the Assembly 
elected aediles, consuls, and praetofs as before. But Caesar 
received "the tribunician power" ^ for life, and the title of 
Imperator for himself and his descendants. This term, from 
which we get our word "Emperor," had meant simply supreme 
general and had been used only of the master of legions in the 
field abroad. Probably Caesar would have liked the title of 
king, since the recognized authority that went with it would 
have helped him to keep order. But he found that name still 
hateful to the people ; and so he adopted Imperator for his 
title as monarch. 

' Caesar was from an old patrician family, and so could not hold the 
office of tribune (p. 256). Therefore he devised this new grant of "trib- 
unician power," to answer the purpose. He also had himself made censor 
for life, so that he could make or degrade senators at will. 



346 FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 49-44 b.c. 



We have tried to show that the Roman "Repubhc" had 
shrunk into a selfish and impotent ohgarchy. The corruption 
and ignorance of the citizens, and the danger of barbarian inva- 
sion, had made some kind of monarchy inevitable. A third 
condition made Caesar's monarchy a boon to the whole Roman 
world. This was the necessity for better government for the 
provinces. There might have arisen a purely selfish despot. 

Caesar rose to power as the 
champion of the suffering sub- 
ject populations. His great aim 
was to mold the distracted 
Roman world into one mighty 
whole under equal laws. 

Already, as proconsul, on his 
own authority, he had admitted 
the Cisalpine Gauls to all the 
privileges of citizenship. In the 
midst of arduous campaigns, he 
had kept up correspondence 
with leading provincials in all 
parts of the empire. Other 
Roman conquerors had spent 
part of their plunder of the 
provinces in adorning Rome 
with public buildings. Caesar 
had expended vast sums in adorning and improving provincial 
cities, not only in his own districts of Gaul and Spain, but also 
in Asia and Greece. All previous Roman armies had been 
made up of Italians. Caesar's army was drawn from Cisalpine 
Gaul, and indeed partly from Gaul beyond the Alps. Many 
of the subject peoples had begun to look to him as their best 
hope against senatorial rapacity ; and the great body of them 
wished for monarchy as an escape from anarchy and oligarchic 
misrule. 

To call Caesar's monarchy a solution for the problems of his 
day is not to call monarchy good at all times. A despotism 




Julius Caesar — the Naples bust. 
We are not sure, however, that 
any of the so-called "busts of 
Caesar" are really authentic. 



JULIUS CAESAR'S FIVE YEARS 



347 



can get along with less virtue and intelligence than a free govern- 
ment can. The Roman world was not good enough or wise 
enough for free government ; and indeed it seemed on the verge 
of ruin. The despotism of the Caesars was a strong poison — 
medicine which preserved that world for five precious centuries. 

Caesar made over the system of provincial government. 
The old governors had been irresponsible tyrants, with every 
temptation to plunder. Under Caesar they began to be trained 
servants of a stern master who looked to the welfare of the whole 
empire. Their authority was lessened, and they were sur- 
rounded by a system of checks in the presence of other officials 
dependent directly upon the Imperator. 

Caesar's plans were broader than this. He meant to put the 
provinces upon an equality with Italy. Part of this he accom- 
plished in the brief time left him. He incorporated all Cisal- 
pine Gaul in Italy, and multiplied Roman citizenship by 
adding whole communities in Gaul beyond the Alps, in Spain, 
and elsewhere. 

Leading Gauls, too, were admitted to the Senate, whose member- 
ship Caesar raised to 900. It was a strange thing, no doubt, 
to see the tall, farr-haired barbarians, speaking with uncouth 
and almost unintelligible accent, intermingled on the benches 
of the Senate-house with the proud Italian aristocrats, even 
though the new members had laid aside the breeches, at which 
Rome jeered, for the white, purple-bordered togas of Senators. 
But Caesar hoped to make the Senate represent not merely 
Rome or Italy, but the whole Empire. 

Rome and Italy were not neglected in Caesar's reforms. A 
commission, like that of the Gracchi, was put at work to reclaim 
and allot public lands. Landlords were required to employ at 
least one free laborer for every two slaves. Italian colonization 
in the provinces was pressed vigorously. In his early consul- 
ship (59 B.C.), Caesar had refounded Capua; now he did the 
like for Carthage and Corinth, and these noble capitals, which 
had been criminally destroyed by the narrow jealousy of the 
Roman aristocracy, rose again to wealth and power. Eighty 



Caesar 
reforms the 
provincial 
system 



And extends 

Roman 

citizenship 

outside 

Italy 



Renewal 
of the 
work of 
the Gracchi 
for Italy 



348 FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 49-44 b.c. 

thousand landless citizens of Rome were provided for beyond 
seas; and by these and other means the helpless poor in the 
capital, dependent upon free grain, were reduced from 320,000 
to 150,000. 

Soon after the time of the Gracchi, it became necessary 
to extend the practice of selling cheap grain to distributing 
free grain, at state expense, to the populace of the capital. 
This became one of the chief duties of the government. 
To have omitted it would have meant starvation and a 
horrible insurrection. For centuries to come, the de- 
graded populace was ready to support any political adven- 
turer who seemed willing and able to satisfy lavishly its 
cry for "bread and games." To have attacked the growing 
evil so boldly is one of Caesar's chief titles to honor. With 
a longer life, no doubt he would have lessened it still further. 
His successors soon abandoned the task. 

Rigid economy was introduced into all branches of the gov- 
ernment. A bankrupt law released all debtors from further 
claims, if they surrendered their property to their creditors,^ — 
and so the demoralized Italian society was given a fresh start. 
Taxation was equalized and reduced. A comprehensive 
census was taken for all Italy, and measures were under way 
to extend it over the empire, as was done later by Augustus. 
Caesar also began the codification of the irregular mass of 
Roman law, created a great public library, rebuilt the Forum, 
began vast public works in all parts of the empire, and reformed 
the coinage and the calendar. 

The Roman calendar had been inferior to the Egyptian 
and had got three months out of the way, so that the 
spring equinox came in June. To correct the error, 
Caesar made the year 46 ("the last year of confusion") 
consist of four hundred and forty-five days, and for the 
future, instituted the system of leap years, as we have it, 

1 This principle has been adopted in Tiiodem legislation. 



JULIUS CAESAR'S FIVE YEARS 



349 



except for a slight correction by Pope Gregory in the 
sixteenth century. The reform was based upon the Egyp- 
tian system (p. 34). 

Caesar was still in the prime of a strong and active manhood, The Ides of 
and had every reason to hope for time to complete his work. ^^'^ 
No public enemy could be raised against him within the empire. 
One danger there was : lurking assassins beset his path. But 




The Roman Forum To-day. — This view looks southward from the direc- 
tion of the Capitoline (p. 243), toward the western edge of the Palatine. 
The group of columns in the foreground belonged to a Temple of Saturn, 
which was also the Roman Treasury. The rows of bases of pillars, on 
the right, belonged to a splendid basilica, or judgnaent hall, built by 
Julius Caesar. South of the Temple of Saturn, and to the left of Caesar's 
basilica, lay the open market place. 

with characteristic dignity he quietly refused a bodyguard, 
declaring it better to die at any time than to live always in 
fear of death. And so, in the midst of preparation for expedi- 
tions against the Parthians and Germans to secure the frontiers, 
the daggers of men whom he had spared struck him down. 

A group of irreconcilable nobles plotted to take his life, — 
led by the envious Cassius and the weak enthusiast Brutus, 



350 FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 49-44 b.c. _ 

whom Caesar had heaped with favors. They accomplished 
their crime in the Senate-house, on the Ides of March (March 
15), 44 B.C. Crowding around him, and fawning upon him as 
if to ask a favor, the assassins suddenly drew their daggers. 
According to an old story, Caesar at first, calling for help, 
stood on his defense and wounded Cassius ; but when he saw 
the loved and trusted Brutus in the snarling pack, he cried 
out sadly, "Thou, too, Brutus!" and drawing his toga about 
him with calm dignity, he resisted no longer, but sank at the foot 
of Pompey's statue, bleeding from three and twenty stabs. 

No man ever excelled Caesar in quick perception of means, 
fertility of resource, dash in execution, or tireless activity. 
His opponent Cicero said of him: "He had genius, under- 
standing, memory, taste, reflection, industry, exactness." 
Numerous anecdotes are told of the many activities he could 
carry on at one time, and of his dictating six or more letters to 
as many scribes at once. Says a modern critic, "He was great 
as a captain, statesman, lawgiver, jurist, orator, poet, historian, 
grammarian, mathematician, architect." His gracious courtesy 
and unrivaled charm won all hearts, so that his enemies dreaded 
personal interviews, lest they be drawn to his side ; and toward 
his friends he never wearied in forbearance and love. 

No doubt, "Caesar was ambitious." He was not a philan- 
thropic enthusiast merely, but a broad-minded, intellectual 
genius, with a strong man's delight in ruling well. He saw 
clearly what was to do, and knew perfectly his own supreme 
ability to do it. Caesar and Alexander are the two great cap- 
tains whose conquests have done most for civilization. Both 
were snatched away from their work by untimely death. But 
Caesar, master in war as he was, always preferred statesman- 
ship, and was free from Alexander's boyish liking for mere 
fighting. 

The murder came five years after Caesar crossed the Rubicon. 
Those years, with their seven campaigns, gave only eighteen 
months for constructive reform. The work was left incomplete ; 
but that which was actually accomplished dazzles the imagma- 



JULIUS CAESAR'S FIVE YEARS 351 

tion. Caesar's genius, too, marked out the lines, along which, 
on the whole, his successors, less grandly, had to move. 

The murder was as imbecile as it was wicked. It struck the 
wise monarch, but not the monarchy, and left Caesar's work to 
be completed by smaller men after a new period of anarchy. 
There is no better way to leave "the foremost man of all this 
world," than to use the words of Moramsen : "Thus he worked 
and created as never any mortal before or after him ; and as a 
worker and creator he still, after two thousand years, lives in 
the memory of the nations — the first and the unique Impera- 
tor Caesar!" 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, 
II, Nos. 50-54 (7 pages) ; and, on Caesar's constructive work, Warde- 
Fowler's Caesar, 326-359, or How and Leigh, 539-55L 

Additional : Davis' A Friend of Caesar (fiction) ; Plutarch's Lives 
("Caesar," "Pompeius," "Cicero"). 

II. FROM JULIUS TO OCTAVIUS, 44-31 b.c. 

Caesar's assassination led to fourteen years more of dreary Flight of the 
civil war, before the Empire was finally established. The 
murderers had hoped to be greeted as liberators. For the 
moment they were the masters of the city ; but, to their dismay, 
all classes (even the senatorial order) shrank from them. At 
Caesar's funeral his lieutenant and friend, Mark Antony, was 
permitted to deliver the usual oration over the dead body. His 
artful and fiery words roused the populace to fury against the 
assassins.^ The mob rose ; all Italy was hostile ; and the con- The 
spirators fled to the Eastern provinces, where the fame of Pom- 
pey was still a strength to the aristocrats. 

In the West, control fell to Anthony and Odavius Caesar. 
Anthony, the orator of Caesar's funeral, was a dissolute, 
resolute, daring soldier. Octavius was a grand-nephew and 
adopted son of Julius Caesar. He was an unknown sickly 
youth of eighteen, still pursuing his studies in lUyria. A letter 

1 Davis' Readings, II, No. 53, gives Appian's account of this opeech. The 
student may compare it with Shakespeare's version in his Julius Caesar. 



assassins 



triumvirs 



352 FOUNDING THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 49-44 b.c. 

from his terrified mother brought news of Caesar's murder and 
urged him to hide himself. Instead, Octavius hurried to Rome, 
and claimed his inheritance as Caesar's heir. Anthony despised 
"the boy" ; but he rallied round him some legions of Caesar's 
old soldiers, and proved himself a shrewd statesman. He 
finally persuaded Anthony to unite forces with him against 
the oligarchs ; and, to secure the West thoroughly, the}^ took 
into partnership Lepidus, governor of Gaul and Spain. 




A Pakt of the Roman Forum To-day, looking north. Note the triumphal 
arch on the right. Cf. p. 349. 

The three men got themselves appointed triumvirs ^ by the 
Senate (43 b.c), with unlimited power to reorganize the state. 
The union was cemented with blood. To their shame, the 
triumvirs abandoned the merciful policy of Caesar. Their 
first deed was to get rid of their personal foes in Italy, and to 

1 The term triumvirate is official in this use, while the so-called first trium- 
virate (p. 339) was an unofficial league, or ring, of public men. The trium- 
virate of 43 B.C. was a dictatorship of three; just as the ancient decemvirate 
(p. 257) was a dictatorship of ten men. 



Anthony 



ANTHONY AND OCTAVIUS 353 

secure money, by a horrible proscription. Each marked off on 
the fatal list those whose deaths and estates he demanded, 
and each surrendered an uncle, a brother, or a trusting friend 
to the others' hate. Three thousand victims perished, — 
among them Cicero, abandoned by his friend Octavius to the 
hatred of Anthony. 

Meantime Brutus and Cassius had been rallying the old Philippi 
Pompeiian forces in the East- Their army contained troops 
from Parthia, Armenia, Media, Pontus, and Thrace. Octavius 
and Anthony marched against them. Again the East and West 
met in conflict, and again the West won — at Philippi in 
Macedonia (42 B.C.). 

Then Octavius and Anthony set aside Lepidus and divided Octavius 
the Roman world between themselves. Soon each was plotting ^^^^ 
for the other's share. The East had fallen to Anthony. In 
Egypt he became infatuated with Cleopatra. He bestowed rich 
provinces upon her, and, it was rumored, he planned to sup- 
plant Rome by Alexandria as chief capital. The West turned 
to Octavius as its champion. In 31, the rivals met in the naval Battle of 
battle of Actium off the coast of Greece. Early in the battle, "^ "™ 
Cleopatra took flight with the Egyptian ships. The infatuated 
Anthony followed,^ deserting his fleet and army. Once more 
the West had won. 

FACT DRILLS 

1. List of important battles in Roman history, to this point, with 
results of each. 

2. List of Rome's wars after 390 b.c. 

3. Dates. Continued drill on the list given on p. 236. Add the 
following and group other dates around these : . 

510 (V) B.C. "Expulsion" of the kings; 

390 (?) B.C. Sack of Rome by the Gauls ; and in like manner, the 
events for 367, 266, 218,^ 146, 133, 49, 31. 

1 Special report : death of Antonius and of Cleopatra. 

2 Cf. 220 B.C. in Greek history. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE EMPERORS OF THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES, 
31 B.C.-180 A.D. 



I. AUGUSTUS, 31 B.C.-14 a.d. 

Actium made Octavius sole master of the Roman world. 
He proceeded to the East to restore order. Cleopatra, last 
of the Ptolemies, took poison rather than grace his triumph, 
and he made Egypt a province. On his retm-n to Rome in 29 
B.C., the gates of the Temple of Janus were closed, in token of 
the reign of peace. ^ He welcomed to favor and to public office 
the followers of his old enemies ; and, by prudent and generous 
measures, he soon brought back prosperit}^ to long-distracted 
Italy. In 27, he laid down his office of triumvir (which had 
become a sole dictatorship), and declared the Republic restored. 
The act really showed that the Empire was safely established. 

To be sure, Octavius himself wrote : " After that time I 
excelled all others in dignity, but of power I held no more than 
those who were my colleagues in any magistracy." And indeed 
Republican forms were respected even more scrupulously 
than by Julius Caesar. But, in reality, supreme power lay in 
Octavius' hands as Imperator, — master of the legions. This 
office he kept, and the Senate now added to it the new title 
Augustus, which had before been used only of the gods. It is 
by this name that he is thenceforth known, though he himself 
preferred to all his. other titles the name Princeps which had 
been given him as "the first citizen of the Republic." He 
lived more simply than many a noble, and walked the streets 
like any citizen, charming all whom he met by his frankness 
and courtesy. He even went through the form of personally 

1 These gates were always open when the Romans were engaged in any 
war. In all Roman history, they had been closed only twice before, — and 
one of these times was in the legendary reign of King Numa. 

354 



AUGUSTUS CAESAR, 31 B.C.-14 a.d. 



355 



14 A.D. 



soliciting votes in the Assembly for his nominees for office, 
like any friend of a candidate in earlier times. 

Augustus was so intrenched in popular favor that he did not 
need open support from the army. The legions were stationed 
mostly on the frontiers, far 
from Italy. He did create 
a body of city troops, nine 
thousand in number, the 
praetorian guards, to pre- 
serve order at Rome ; but, 
during his rule, even these 
guards were encamped 
outside the city. 

Augustus ruled forty- ^^^^^^^H^||^£^^ -..^^^H ^^^ ^°"^ 
five years after Actium, ^^^^^H^~ fs "'^rTH^H A^ugustus, 
and gave that long rule ^^^^^^^m-- *" 1 ..■ ^r^.^^B 3i b.c- 
to unremitting toil in 
strengthening the Em- 
pire and in improving the 
condition of the peopb 
throughout the Roman 
world. 

For the capital, he cre- 
ated a police department, 
a fire department, and a 
department for the dis- 
tribution of grain, each 
under its proper head, and 
he renewed, for the last 
tirne, the work of found- 
ing colonies outside Italy 
on a large scale. The needs 

of the provinces received careful attention. Throughout the 
Empire, peace reigned. Order was everywhere established. In- 
dustry revived and throve. Marshes were drained. Roads were 
built. A postal system was organized. A great census of the 



1 


^ 






'1^^ 




^^^■mp «•' ^^^^^H 




^^H 




K^'^^H 




R:^-^!;S^ 




l^V^^i^^g|.\ l9 


:^s^^!^ll II 




^^^^^mm 




^^^^^^«H 


mI 


ji* 


* 


fl\_ 


^^■^^ .-- _i 


^ 1 



Augustus. — Now in the Vatican. 



356 



ROMAN EMPERORS, 31 b.c.-IS a.d. 





A Gold Coin of Augustus. 



whole Empire was carried out, and many distant communities 

were granted Roman citizenship. The chief cities of the Empire, 

too, were adorned with 
noble buildings, — tem- 
ples, theaters, porticoes, 
baths. Augustus tells 
us in a famous inscrip- 
tion that in one year he 
himself began the re- 
building of eighty-two 

temples ; and of Rome he said, " I found it brick and have left 

it marble." 

The Emperor was also a generous and ardent patron of litera- 
ture and art, and in, this patronage he was imitated by many 

great nobles and especially 

by his wealthy minister 

Maecenas, whose fame in 

this respect outshines even 

that of his master. The 

Augustan Age is the 

"golden age" of Latin lit- 
erature. 

At the death of Augustus, 

the Senate decreed him 

divine honors. Temples 

were erected in his honor, 

and he was worshiped as a 

god. Such worship seems 

impious to us, but it was 

natural to the Romans. 

It was connected with the 

idea of ancestor worship in 

each family, and with the 

general worship of ancient heroes, and was a way of recognizing 

the Emperor as "the father of all his people." The practice 

was adopted for the successors of Augustus, and this worship 




Augustus as a Boy. — A bust now in 
the Vatican. 



THE JULIAN LINE 



357 



of dead emperors soon became a general and widespread re- 
ligious rite, the only religion common to the whole Roman 
world, — binding together the dwellers on the Euphrates, the 
Nile, the Tiber, the Rhone, and the Tagus. 

But, it is interesting to remember, shortly before this wor- And the 
ship began, when the reign of Augustus was a little more than ^ 
half gone, there was born in a manger in an obscure hamlet 
of a distant corner of the Roman world, the child Jesus, whose 
religion, after some centuries, was to replace the worship of 
dead emperors and all other religious faiths of the pagan world. 




Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem — on the site of the stable where 
Christ was born. 



II. THE REMAINING FOUR JULIAN i CAESARS 

At Augustus' death, everyone recognized that some one must Tiberius, 
be appointed to succeed him. Unlike Julius Caesar, he had not ^4-37 • • 
openly tried to make his office hereditary ; but the Senate at 
once granted his titles and authority to his stepson Tiberius, 
whom he had "recommended'' to them. 

Tiberius (14-37 a.d.) was stern, morose, suspicious ; but he 
was also an able, conscientious ruler. The nobles of the capital 
conspired against him, and were punished cruelly. The populace 
1 So named because related by blood or adoption to the great Julius. 



358 



ROMAN EMPERORS TO 192 a.d. 



of Rome, too, hated him because he aboUshed the Assembly, 
where they had sold their votes, and because he refused to 
amuse them with gladiatorial sports. To keep the capital 
in order, Tiberius brought the praetorians (p. 355) into the city. 
He also made the law of treason (majestas) apply to word^ 
against the Emperor, as well as to acts of violence ; and he 
encouraged a system of paid spies. Such wretches sometimes 
invented plots, when there were none, so as to share in the 
confiscation of the property of the man they accused. So the 
people of Rome with some reason looked upon Tiberius as a 
gloomy tyrant. But in the provinces he was proverbial for fair- 
ness, kindness, and good government. " A good shepherd shears 
his sheep, he does not flay them," was one of his sayings. On 
one occasiwi, after a great earthquake in Asia Minor, he rebuilt 
twelve cines which had been destroyed there. In this reign 
occurred t^ e crucifixion of Christ: 

In the absence of nearer heirs, Tiberius adopted his grand- 
nephew Caligula} nominating him to the Senate, in his will, 
for his successor. The Senate confirmed the appointment. 

This prince had been a promising youth, but, crazed by power, 
or by a serious illness, he became a capricious madman, with 
gleams of ferocious humor. "Would that the Romans had 
all one neck!" he exclaimed, wishing that he might behead 
them all at one stroke. The gladiatorial shows and the wild- 
beast fights of the amphitheater fascinated him strangely. It is 
said that sometimes, to add to the spectacle, he ordered 
spectators to be thrown to the animals, and he entered the 
arena himself as a gladiator, to win the applause of the people 
whom he hated. After four years (37-41 a.d.), this insane 
monster was slain by officers of his guard. 

Caligula had named no successor. For a moment the Senate 
hoped to restore the old Republic ; but the praetorians (devoted 
to the great Julian line) hailed Claudius, an uncle of Caligula, 
as Imperator, and the Senate had to confirm the appointment 
made in this new way. Claudius (41-54 a.d.) had been a timid, 
gentle, awkward, well-meaning scholar and an author of several 



THE JULIAN LINE 



359 



tiresome books ; but now he gave his time faithfully to the hard 
work of governing, with fairly good results. His reign is 
famous for a great extension of citizenship to provincials, for 
legislation to protect slaves against cruel masters, and for the 
conquest of southern Britain. 

Nero, Claudius' stepson, became Emperor as a likable boy Nero, 54-68 
of sixteen. He had been trained by the philosopher Seneca 



y It lit 






Ruins of the Aqueduct of Claudius, Crossing the Plain of Latium. — 
The water was brought forty miles from distant Apennine lakes to 
Rome, and for the final ten miles it was carried on arches like these. Not 
far to one side, and nearly parallel here, runs the Appian Way (p. 270). 

(p. 384), and for two thirds of his reign he was guided by this 
great thinker and by other wise ministers. The young Emperor 
cared little for affairs of government, but was fond of art, and 
ridiculously vain of his skill in music and poetry. After some 
years his fears, together with a total lack of principle, led him 
to crime and tyranny. He poisoned his half-brother, and had 
his ambitious mother murdered. Wealthy nobles were put to 
death in numbers, and their property confiscated, Seneca him- 
self being among the victims. Like Caligula, Nero entered 



360 



ROMAN EMPERORS TO 192 a.d. 



the lists as a gladiator, and he sought popular applause also for 
his music and dancing. 

During this reign, half of Rome was laid in ashes by the " Great 
Fire" (Davis' Readings, II, No. 65). In the densely populated 
parts of the city, many-storied, cheap, flimsy tenement houses 
projected their upper floors nearly across the narrow^ crooked 
thoroughfares, so that the fire leaped easily from side to side. 
For six days and nights the flames raged unchecked, surging in 




Part of the Claudian Aqueduct (cf. p. 359) now used as a gate in the 
city wall. Parts of adjoining arches, built into the wall, may be dimly 
seen in the illustration. 



billows over the slopes and through the valleys of the Seven 
Hills. By some, Nero was believed to have ordered the de- 
struction, in order that he might rebuild in more magnificent 
fashion. On better authority he was reported to have enjoyed 
the spectacle from the roof of his palace, with music and dancing, 
singing meanwhile a poem he had composed on the " Burning 
of Troy." 

The new sect of Christians also were accused of starting the 
fire, out of their supposed "hatred for the human race," and 



THE JULIAN LINE 



361 



because they had so often declared that a fiery destruction of 

the world was coming. To turn attention from himself, Nero 

took up the charge against them, and carried out the first Nero's 

persecution of the Christians (p. 407), one of the most cruel in all Persecution 

history. Victims, tarred with pitch, were burned as torches tians 

in the imperial gardens, to light the indecent revelry of the court 

at night ; and others, clothed in the skins of animals, were torn 

by dogs for the amusementj'of the mob. The persecution, 

however, was confined to the capital, 

and was not religious in purpose. 

Nero's disgraceful and weak rule 
finally roused the legions on the fron- 
tiers to rebel. The tyrant was at 
once deserted by all, and the Senate 
condemned him to death. To avoid 
capture he stabbed himself, exclaim- 
ing, "What a pity for such an artist 
to die!" 




Beonze Coin of Nero — to 
commemorate the closing 
of the doors of the Temple 
of Janus (of. p. 354). 



The year 69 was one of wild con- 
fusion. The legions in Spain had 
proclaimed their general Galha Emperor. Galba fell before Otho, 
supported by the praetorians. Otho, in turn, was overthrown 
by Vitellius, at the head of the army of the Rhine. Then the 
more powerful legions in Syria proclaimed their general, Flavius 
Vespasianus (Vespasian), who quickly made himself master of 
the Empire. The Senate could only ratify the decision of the 
soldiery. 



THE FLAVIAN 1 CAESARS 

Vespasian was the grandson of a Sabine laborer. He was a Vespasian, 
rude soldier, — stumpy in build, blunt in manner, homely 7o-79 
in tastes, but honest, industrious, experienced, and broad- 



1 The name comes from Vespasian's first name, Flavius. The "Julian" 
emperors had been Romans ; this Flavian group were of Italian descent ; 
the next group (p. 365) were provincials. 



362 



ROMAN EMPERORS TO 192 a.d. 



minded. He had distinguished himself in Britain and in 
Asia, and he knew the needs of the Empire. His reign was 
economical and thrifty. He loved simple manners and homely 
virtues, and hated sham. So, at the end, as he felt the hand 




Triumphal Arch of Titus, showing the Colosseum (p. 390) in the distance. 
(Locate both structures on map, p. 402.) The triumphal arch, spanning a 
city street like a gate, was a favorite decorative application of the arch 
by the Romans. For an Egyptian model, see p. 221. 



FLAVIANS AND ANTONINES 



363 



of death upon him, he said, with grim irony, "I think I 

am becoming a god," — in allusion to the worship of dead 

emperors. 

The most striking event in Vespasian's reign was the siege Siege and 

and destruction of Jerusalem. The kingdom of the Jews, <*^struction 

of Jeru- 
which the heroic Maccabees established (p. 303), had been made salem 

a tributary state by Pompey during his Eastern wars, in the 




Detail fbom the Triumphal Arch of Titus (p. 362), showing the seven- 
branched candlestick taken from the Temple at Jerusalem. 



year 63 b.c, and in 4 a.d. it became a Roman province. But 
the Jews were restless under foreign rule, and in the year 66, in 
Nero's time, a national uprising drove out the Roman officers. 
This rebellion was put down by Vespasian and his son Titus. In 
70 A.D. Titus captured Jerusalem, after a stubborn siege. He 
had offered liberal terms to the starving citizens ; but the des- 
perate Jews made a frenzied resistance, and when the walls 
were finally stormed, many of them slew their women and 
children and died in the flames. The miserable remnant for 



364 



ROMAN EMPERORS TO 192 a.d. 




the most part were sold into slavery, and they have remained 
a dispersed people to this day. 
79-81 Titus had been associated in the government with his father. 
His kindness toward all classes made him the most popular of 

all the emperors.. Once at 
supper, not able to remember 
that he had made any one 
happy during the day, he ex- 
claimed, " I have lost a day ! " 
The most famous event of 
his two years' reign was the 
destruction of Pompeii and Her- 
culaneum by Vesuvius. This 
volcano was believed extinct, 
and its slopes were covered 
with villas and vineyards ; but 
in 79 A.D., with little warning it belched forth in terrible erup- 
tion, burying two cities and many villages in ashes and volcanic 
mud. In the eighteenth century, by the chance digging of a 
well, the site of Pompeii, the largest of the two cities, was 
rediscovered. In recent years it has 
been excavated; and to-day a visitor 
can walk through the streets of an an- 
cient city, viewing perfectly preserved 
houses, shops, temples, baths, theaters, 
ornaments, and tools of the men of 
eighteen hundred years ago, just as they 
chanced to stand when the volcanic 
ashes and lava flood came upon them. 
(See illustrations on pp. 311, 314, 392.) 
Domitian, younger brother of Titus, 
was a strong, stern ruler. His general, 

Agricola, completed the conquest of Britain to the highlands 
of Caledonia (Scotland). In the years that followed, Roman 
roads were built in the island ; camps grew into rich cities ; 
merchants thronged to them ; the country was dotted with 




Coin of Domitian — to 
commemorate the com- 
pletion of the Colos- 
seum (p. 390). 



S^-fis 



^^'lA 



^ 






Zr^^. 






P'fi 



le; 



TS °' 



-jereroi-/ ' 









^ 







^op^^•pI^J 



'Vl'iJdobonS,'*'^' 



P<-NAo\ia! 






SalonaxO ^ 






Dyirhachii^J* X 






^ 



^ 



^ 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE 

At its Greatest Extent 
With some Roman Roads 

SCALE OF ENGLISH MILES 

100 200 300 400 600 

SCALE OF ROMAN MILES 

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 

100 200 300 400 600 

EXPLANATION 

The Homan Empire at the Death of Caesar, 44 'B.C. 

Additions up to the Death of Augustus, li A.D. 

Additions up to the Death of Trajan, 117 A.p. ^^ 

J ( L^ 



::zr4<r^s> 


) C TI 


h- 


„.'''' 


Koman'Roads 





■Longitade West 



10 Longitude 15 



FLAVIANS AND ANTONINES 



365 



beautiful villas ; and Britain became a peaceful, prosperous 
Roman province. 

Domitian took the office of Censor for life, and so could legally 
make and unmake senators at will.^ This led the Roman nobles 
to conspire dgainst him and 
finally he was assassinated. 

THE ANTONINE CAESARS 

The Senate chose the next 
ruler from its own number ; 
and that Emperor with his 
four successors governed 
in harmony with it. These 
princes are known as the five 
good Eviperors. The first of 
the five was Nerva, an aged 
Senator of Spanish descent, 
who died after a kindly rule 
of sixteen months. 

Trajan, the adopted son 
of Nerva, was a Spaniard by 
birth and a great general. 
He conquered and colonized 
Dacia, a vast district north 
of the Danube, and then 
attacked the Parthians in 
Asia. That power was hum- 
bled, and new provinces 
were added beyond the Eu- 
phrates. These victories mark 
the greatest extent of the Roman Empire. Dacia is the modern 
Roumania. It was lost to the Empire after only a hundred 
years ; but its inhabitants have ever since claimed to be Roman 
in race as in name. 




Trajan, 
98-117 



Trajan's Column, commemorating the 
Dacian conquest. It is 100 feet high, 
and the spiral bands of sculpture that 
circle it contain 2500 figures. It is the 
finest survival of a favorite Roman form 
of monument. Cf. p. 51 for an earlier 
model. See a detail on p. 383. 



1 No other Emperor had done this since Julius Caesar ; but it was always 
done after this time. 



366 



ROMAN EMPERORS TO 192 a.d. 



Trajan's reign was the most famous in Roman history for the 
construction of roads and other useful public works throughout the 
provinces. Despite his wars, his rule was humane as well as 
just. By loans from the treasury, he encouraged the cities of 
Italy to care for and educate many thousands of poor children,^ 
and slaves were protected by strict laws against cruelty. A 
slight persecution of Christians took place under this Emperor. 

Hadrian, a Spanish kinsman of Trajan, succeeded him. 
Wisely and courageously, he abandoned most of Trajan's 




Ruins of the Temple of Zeus built by Hadrian at Athens. — Note 
the Corinthian style (p. 111). The AcropoHs is visible in the background. 

conquests in Asia (disregarding the sneers and murmurs of nobles 
and populace), and withdrew the frontier there to the old line 
of the Euphrates, more easily defended. He looked to the for- 
tification of other exposed frontiers. His most famous work of 
this kind was a wall in Britain, from the Solway to the Tyne (to 
keep out the unconquered Picts of the northern highlands), to 
replace a less satisfactory "Wall of Agricola" still farther to the 
north. 

1 Capes' Antonines, 19-21, gives the details. 



FLAVIANS AND ANTONINES 



367 



This "Wall -of Hadrian" was seventy miles long, extending almost 
from sea to sea. Considerable portions can still be traced. It con- 
sisted of three distinct parts : (1) a stone wall and ditch, on the north ; 
(2) a double earthen rampart and ditch, about one hundred and 
twenty yards to the south ; and (3) between wall and rampart a series 
of fourteen fortified camps connected by a road. The northern wall 
was eight feet broad and twenty feet high, with turreted gates at mile 
intervals, and with numerous large towers for guard-stations. 




Tomb of Hadrian. — When the Vandals attacked Rome (p. 436) this 
structure was used as a citadel, and the marble statues that originally 
crowned it were hurled down on the enemy as missiles. (Locate on map, 
p. 402.) 

Hadrian spent most of his twenty years' rule in inspecting 
the provinces. Now he is in Britain, now in Dacia ; again in 
Gaul, or in Africa. Syria and Egypt were both visited. He 
spent several months in Asia Minor, and in Macedonia ; and 
twice he visited Athens, his favorite city, which he adorned with 
splendid buildings. Indeed, everywhere memorials of his stay 
sprang up in useful public works, — aqueducts, baths, schools, 
basilicas (p. 408), highways, temples. 



368 ROMAN EMPERORS TO 192 a.d. 

Hadrian also organized the civil service of the Empire, — 
the whole body of officers who carried on the administration. 
Every Emperor, necessarily, had been surrounded by assistants 
and advisers ; and sometimes these had been vicious adven- 
turers or greedy freedmen. The nobles had felt it beneath their 
dignity to take regular office as secretary to a "Princeps." 
But Hadrian brought nobles and "knights" into the public 
service, and built up a body of trained public servants, who 
thereafter continued from reign to reign, with fixed customs. 
Moreover, he brought together the heads of important adminis- 
trative divisions into a true Privy Council (or Cabinet) to advise 
and inform the Emperor In short, he sought, not to enlarge 
the Empire, but to strengthen and reorganize it, — a most useful 
work for the evil days soon to follow. 

For relaxation, Hadrian liked to write graceful verse, and 
the lines he addressed to his soul as he felt death approach are 
true poetry : 

"Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one, 
Guest and partner of my clay, 
Whither wilt thou hie away, 
Pallid one, rigid one, naked one, — 
Never to play again, never to play?" 

Hadrian was followed by Antoninus Pius, whom he had 
adopted. This reign was singularly peaceful and uneventful, 
and might well have given rise to the saying, " Happy the people 
whose annals are meager." Antoninus himself was a pure 
and gentle spirit, and the chief feature of his rule was legislation 
to prevent cruelty to slaves. 

On the evening of his death, when asked by the officer of 
the guard for the watchword for the night, he gave the word 
Equanimity, which might have served as the motto of his 
life. His adopted son wrote of him : " He was ever prudent 
and temperate. . . . He looked to his duty, and not to the 
opinion of men. . . . There was in his life nothing harsh, 
nothing excessive, nothing overdone." (Davis' Readings, II, 
No. 69, gives two pages more of this noble tribute.) 



FLAVIANS AND ANTONINBS 



369 



Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, nephew and adopted son of 
Antoninus Pius, was a philosopher and student. He belonged 
to the Stoics (p. 232), but in him that stern philosophy, without 
losing its lofty tone, was softened by a gracious gentleness. His 
tastes made him wish to continue in his father's footsteps, but 
he had fallen upon harsher times. The barbarians renewed 
their attacks upon the Danube, the Rhine, and the Euphrates. 
The Emperor and his lieutenants beat them back, but at the 
cost of almost incessant war ; and the gentle philosopher lived 
and wrote and died in camp, on the frontiers. A great Asiatic 
plague, too, swept over the Empire. Not only did it cause 
terrible loss of life : it also demoralized society. The populace 
thought the disease a visitation from offended gods, and, in 
many parts of the Empire, they were frantically excited against 
the unpopular sect of Christians who refused to worship the 
gods of Rome. Thus the reign of the kindly Aurelius was 
marked by a cruel persecution. 

The "five good Emperors" end with Marcus Aurelius. His 
son, Commodus, was an infamous wretch who was finally mur- 
dered by his officers. 



Marcus 

Aurelius, 

161-180 



For Further Reading. 
own account of his work) 
especially ch. i. 



— Davis' Readings, II, No. 56 (Augustus' 
and No. 59, and Capes' Early Empire, 




Lyons in Roman Times. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 



THE EARLY EMPIRE: GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY 



Republican Rome had little to do . 
Rome, everything. — Stille. 



. with modern life: imperial 



I. PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT 

The government of the Empire did not invent much new 
poHtieal machinery : it merely combined old institutions in a 
new way. Following the example of Julius Caesar (p. 345), 
each emperor concentrated in his own person the most important 
offices of the Republic, — poioers which had originally been in- 
tended to check one another. He held the trihunician jwwer in the 
city and the proconsular power throughout all the provinces. As 
censor, he could appoint and degrade Senators; and as Princeps, 
he led the debates in the Senate — and could control its decrees, 
which had become the chief means of lawmaking. He ap- 
pointed the governors of the provinces, the generals of the legions, 
the city prefect, the head of the city police, and the prefect oi 
the praetorians. Each successor of Augustus was hailed 7m- 
perator Caesar Augustus, (The title Caesar survived till recently, 
in Kaiser, and in Tsar.) 

Most of the emperors so far, however, were glad to have the 
help of the Senate in governing. That body was no longer a 
Roman oligarchy : the emperors had made it a chosen body 
of distinguished men from all parts of the realm, acquainted 
with the needs and feelings of all the Empire. 

The population of 75,000,000 or 100,000,000 people was 
gathered in myriads of cities great and small, each throbbing 
with varied industry and with intellectual life. Everywhere 
rude stockaded villages had changed into stately marts of trade, 
huts into palaces, footpaths into paved Roman roads. Roman 

370 



TOWN GOVERNMENT 



371 



irrigation made part of the African desert the garden of the 
world, where, from drifting sands, desolate ruins mock the 
traveler of to-day. The regular symbol of Africa in art was a 
gracious virgin with arms filled with sheaves of golden grain. 
In Gaul, Caesar found no real towns ; but in the third century 
that province had 116 flourishing cities, with baths, temples, 




Aqueduct near Nimes, France, built about 150 a.d. by the Emperor An- 
toninus Pius to supply the city with water from springs 25 miles distant ; 
present condition of the long gray structure, where it crosses the Gard 
River. Water pipes were carried through hills by tunnels and across 
streams and valleys on arches like these. This aqueduct has vanished 
(its stones used for other buildings) except for this part ; but here it is 
still possible to walk through the pipes on the top row of arches. Some 
of these Roman aqueducts remained in use till very recent days. 

amphitheaters, works of art, roads, aqueducts, and schools of 
eloquence and rhetoric. One of the two Spanish provinces 
had 174 towns, each with a charter from some emperor defining 
its rights of self-government. 

Particular attention was paid in cities to the water supply. 
That of Rome was better than that of London or Paris to-day. 



372 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



The cities had more and better public baths than the modern 
capitals of Europe or the cities of America. In Rome the 
public baths would care for 60,000 people at a time. 

These towns were municipia; and, even under the despotic 
Empire, "municipal institutions" for local self-government 
survived in hundreds of them. True, the local government of 
Rome itself, along with that of Alexandria and other large 
cities with dangerous street mobs, was placed in the hands of 
officers appointed by the emperors. But in towns of Gaul and 
Dacia, Assemblies continued to elect each year their consuls (a 
sort of twin mayors), their aediles to oversee the police and the 
public works, and their quaestors to care for the city finances ; 
while in each such town, a town council (senate) of ex-magis- 
trates voted local taxes, oversaw their expenditure, and looked 
after town matters in general. Election placards painted on the 
walls of the houses in Pompeii (p. 364) show that the contests 
for office were quite modern in method (Davis' Readings, II, 
No. 69). 

Some 1500 political posters were painted on the walls of Pompeii's 
streets. Probably these all concerned one recent election ; for when 
their purpose was served, the space would be whitewashed over, and 
used for new notices. These notices are painted in red letters from 
two to ten inches high, on a white background. Each man, apparently, 
could use his own wall to recommend his favorite candidates ; but hired 
and zealous "bill-posters" blazoned their placards even upon private 
buildings and upon funeral monuments. A baker is nominated for 
quaestor (city treasurer) on the ground that he sells "good bread"; 
and near by a leading aristocrat is supported as one of whom it is known 
that " he will guard the treasury." Trade gilds make some of these 
nominations, and even women take part in them, — though of covirse 
not in the voting. One " wide-open " candidate for " police com- 
missioner " is attacked by an ironical wag in several posters — as in one 
that reads, "All the late-drinkers ask your support for Valia for the 
Aedileship." 

Provincial governors were often disposed impatiently to 
sweep away these local institutions in order to get quicker 
results. Pliny (p. 384) was a worthy servant of a noble emperor ; 
but we find Pliny writing to ask Trajan whether he shall allow 



LIFE AND WORK 



373 



the citizens of a town in his province of Bithynia to repair their 
public baths, as they desire, or whether he shall require them to 
huild new ones, and whether he shall not interfere to compel a 
wise use of public moneys lying idle in another town, and so 
on (Davis' Readings, II, No. 75). 

Trajan, wiser than his minister, gently rebukes Pliny's over- 
zeal in some of these matters, and will have no wanton meddling 
with established rights. Later rulers were not so far-sighted, 
and local self-government did decline. Still, the forms of this 
municipal life never wholly died out. The Empire passed them 
on — even through the dark period of the Middle Ages — to 
our modern world. 

The province as a whole, above the separate towns, had no No self- 
self-government whatever. It had no Assembly (except on fo/^he™^" 
rare occasions, and then only to give information to the em- province 
peror) and no elected officers. The better emperors gave 
earnest study to provincial needs; but their rule, however 
kindly, was an absolute despotism, along the lines the first 
Caesar had marked out (pp. 346-347). 

II. LIFE AND WORK 

Most towns were places of 20,000 people or less ; but there Trade and 
were also a few great centers of trade, — Rome, with perhaps two 
million people ; Alexandria (in Egypt) and Antioch (in Asia) 
with half a million each ; and Corinth, Carthage, Ephesus, and 
Lyons, with some 250,000 apiece. 

These commercial cities were likewise centers of manufac- 
tures. The Emperor Hadrian visited Alexandria (about 125 
A.D.) and wrote in a letter : " No one is idle ; some work glass ; 
some make paper (papyrus) ; some weave linen. Money is 
the only god." The looms of Sidon and the other old Phoenician 
cities turned forth ceaselessly their precious purple cloths. 
Miletus, Rhodes, and other Greek cities of the Asiatic coast 
were famous for their woolen manufactures. Syrian factories 
poured silks, costly tapestries, and fine leather into western 
Europe. The silversmiths of Ephesus were numerous enough, 



manu- 
factures 



374 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles (xix, 23-41), to stir 
up a formidable riot. 

The ordinary town was the core of a farming district — 
which was included with the town itself in the municipium. 
The devouring of small farms by large landlords, which had 
ruined much of Italy in the second century B.C., began to show 
ominously in the provinces by the second century a.d. ; but on 
the whole, for this period, especially in the western half of 
the Empire, the farmers were a plain, sturdy peasantry, owning 
their own lands, or, generation after generation, tilling the 
same farms as tenants.^ Market gardening was a profitable 
employment near the cities ; and a Roman historian tells of two 
old soldiers who, with half an acre of land, made $500 a year 
from their bees, — an amount equivalent to an income of several 
thousand dollars to-day. As always in the Old World, the 
"farmers" lived, not each family on its own farmstead as with 
us, but either in the city or in small hamlets grouped about it. 

Each town, large or small, had also its many gilds of artisans, 
weavers, fullers, and shopkeepers (p. 278). In Rome the bakers' 
gild listed 254 shops, and olive oil was for sale at 2300 different 
places. 

Slaves performed most of the unskilled hand-labor in the 
towns. A baker or a mason would usually have two or three 
or a dozen slaves to work under his direction. For the gentle- 
man class (nobles) there were the occupations of law, the army, 
literature, and the farming of large estates. A middle class 
furnished merchants (as distinguished from shopkeepers), 
engineers, architects, bankers, teachers, physicians, and many 
men of letters. We read of dentists, and of specialists for the 
eye and for the ear. 

The roads were safe. Piracy ceased from the seas, and 
trade flourished as it was not to flourish again until the days 
of Columbus. The ports were crowded with shipping, and the 
Mediterranean was spread with happy sails. One Roman 

1 For this last condition, even in Italy (in the North), see Davis' Read- 
ings, II, No. 88. 



TRAVEL AND TRADE 



375 



writer exclaims that there are as many men upon the waves as 
upon land. The ships were much like the sailing vessels used 
in the Mediterranean coasting trade to-day, and not very 
unlike those with which Columbus crossed the Atlantic. An 
immense traffic flowed ceaselessly between Europe and central 
Asia along three great arteries : (1) by the Black Sea and by 
caravan, along the line of the present Russian Trans-Caspian 
railway ; (2) by Suez and the Red Sea ; and (3) between these, 




Bridge Built by Augustus at Rimini — on the xldrialic ten miles south , 
of the Rubicon. Still in perfect condition. 



by caravan across Arabia, where, amid the sands, arose white- 
towered Palmyra, Queen of the Desert, daughter of this trade. 
From end to end of the Empire, travel was safe and rapid. 
The grand military roads ran in trunk-lines — a thousand miles 
at a stretch — from every frontier toward the central heart of 
the Empire, with a dense network of branches in every province. 
Guide books described routes and told distances. Inns 
abounded. The imperial couriers that hurried along the great 
highways passed a hundred and fifty milestones a day. And 



376 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



private travel, from the Thames to the Euphrates, was swifter, 
safer, and more comfortable than ever again until the days of 
railroads in the nineteenth century. Much of this travel was 
in wheeled and cushioned carriages, which rolled smoothly 
along the perfectly faced stones of the Roman roads. But 
many people chose instead luxurious litters, each swung along 
by its eight even-paced Cappadocian slaves at a swift trot, 
with a motion so easy that reading or writing within was a 
pleasant employment. 

The products of one region of the Empire were known in every 
other part. Women of the Swiss mountains wore jewelry made 
by the silversmiths of Ephesus ; and gentlemen in Britain and 
in Cilicia drank wines made in Italy. The gravestones of 
ancient Syrian traders are found to-day from Roumania to 
France; and in Asia the monuments of Gallic merchants 
witness to this same intercourse. One merchant of Phrygia 
(in Asia Minor) asserts on his gravestone that he had sailed 
"around Greece to Italy seventy-two times." 

There was also a vast commerce with regions beyond the 
boundaries of the Empire. Caesar found that the trader had 
preceded him to the most distant parts of Gaul in his day. 
Just as English and Dutch traders journeyed three hundred 
years ago far into the savage interiors of America for better 
and better bargains in furs, so did the indomitable Roman trader 
continue to press on into regions where the legions never camped. 
They visited Ireland ; and both by sea and by overland routes 
from the Danube, they found their way to the Baltic shores. 
Thence they brought back amber, furs, and flaxen German 
hair with which the dark Roman ladies liked to deck their 
heads. Such goods the trader paid for in toys and trinkets 
and in wine and sometimes in Roman arms and tools, such as 
have been found on the Jutland coast, — as our colonial traders 
got their furs from the Indians with beads and whisky and guns 
and powder and knives. On the south. East Africa and Central 
Africa rewarded the venturesome trader with ivory, spices, 
apes, rare marbles, wild beasts, and negro slaves. On the east, 



TRAVEL AND TRADE 



377 



he reached civihzed lands. A Latin poet speaks of "many 
merchants" who reaped "immense riches" by venturesome 
voyages over the Indian Ocean "to the mouth of the Ganges." 




Trajan's Arch at Beneventum commemorating victories in Asia. 
See p. 362. 

India, Ceylon, and Malasia sent to Europe indigo, spices, pearls, 
sapphires, and other precious stones, draining away, in return, 
vast sums of Roman gold and silver coin. And from shadowy 
regions beyond India came the silk yarn which kept the Syrian 



378 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



looms busy. Chinese annals of the year 166 a.d. tell of an 
"embassy" from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius; and 200 years 
later they speak again of the port of Canton receiving from 
Roman traders glass and metal wares, amber, jewels, and drugs. 
And men traveled for pleasure as well as for business. There 
was a keen desire in each great quarter of the Empire to see the 
other regions which Rome had molded into one world. It 

seems to have been at 
least as common a thing 
for the gentleman of Gaul 
or Britain to visit the 
wonders of Rome and of 
the Nile as for the modern 
American to spend a 
summer in England and 
France. One language an- 
swered all needs from Lon- 
don to Babylon. Families 
took pleasm-e trips in a 
body ; and, quite in mod- 
ern fashion, they some- 
times defaced precious 
monuments of the past 
with their scrawls. One 
of the most famous statues 
of Egypt bears a scratched inscription that it has been visited 
by a certain Roman gentleman, "Gemellus," with "his dear 
wife, Rufilla" and their children. 




Marcus Aurelius, a statue at Rome. 



Banking was an important business. The early Romans 
and Greeks often buried their money in the earth for safe keep- 
ing, but that practice had long ceased except with such ignorant 
or slothful rustics as are rebuked in Christ's parable. Instead, 
all over the Roman world, men placed money with the bankers, 
to receive it again with interest. The bankers, of course, 
earned the interest (and their own profits) by lending the money 



TRAVEL AND TRADE 379 

out meanwhile at higher rates than they paid. As in our own 
day, a large part of the business was done on borrowed capital 
furnished by bankers. 

Moreover, countless merchants in every part of the empire 
would come, day by day, to owe one another large sums. To 
carry the coin from one frontier to another for each such debt 
would be costly — and indeed impossible for business of such 
volume as had grown up. So banks, as with us, had come to 
sell "bills of exchange," or drafts. A merchant in Alexandria 
who owed money to a citizen of Cologne could pay the amount 
into a home bank (plus some "premium" for the bank's serv- 
ice) and receive an order for the amount on a bank in Co- 
logne. This slip of paper would then be sent to the creditor in 
Cologne, who could present it at his bank, and get his money. 
The Cologne bank, sooner or later, would have occasion to sell 
a draft upon the Alexandria bank, in like fashion. At some 
convenient time, the two banks would have to settle their bal- 
ance in coin; but the amount to be carried from one to the 
other would be very small, compared with the total amount of 
business. 

With such a widespread system of "credits," the Roman 
world, like our own, had its money flurries and "panics." A 
crop failure in Africa, or the loss of a richly laden merchant 
fleet by a hurricane in the Red Sea, or a period of rash specula- 
tion in Gaul, was felt at once in the money market of every part 
of the Empire. The failure of a great banking house in Antioch 
might drag down others in Rome and Alexandria. Thus in 
the year of Christ's crucifixion there happened the first great 
money panic in history (an event which made much more noise 
in the Roman world than the vague rumor of a slight disturbance 
in Judea). Evil results, however, were checked by the prompt 
and wise action of the government. The Emperor Tiberius 
placed $4,000,000 in coin from the imperial treasury in certain 
central banks, to be loaned to hard-pressed debtors, and ordered 
that debtors who could give security in real estate should have 
a three-years' extension of time. 



380 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



Julius Caesar had begun the rapid expansion of Roman 
citizenship beyond Italy. Through him the number of adult 
males with the franchise rose from some nine hundred thousand 
to over fom' million. Augustus, Claudius, and Hadrian, as 
we have seen, granted further extensions ; and a little later, 
in 212 A.D., the Emperor Caracalla made all free inhabitants of 
the Empire full citizens. 

This "citizenship" no longer gave a vote; but it did insure 
important rights before the law, and its wide extension wiped 




Palace of Roman Emperors at Trier (Treves). 



out all political distinction between Italy and the old "prov- 
inces." Indeed the greatest of the later emperors were more 
at home at York on the British Humber, or at Cologne or 
Trier on the Rhine, or at some capital by the Danube or the 
Black Sea, than at old Rome by the Tiber — which perhaps 
they visited only for some solemn pageant. 

This widespread, happy society rested in "the good Roman 
peace" for more than two hundred years, — from the reign of 
Augustus Caesar through that of Marcus Aurelius, or from 



THE WORLD BECOMES ROMAN 381 

31 B.C. to 180 A.D. No other part of the world so large has 
ever known such unbroken prosperity and such freedom from 
the waste and horror of war for so long a time. Few troops were 
seen within the Empire, and " the distant clash of arms [with 
barbarians] on the Euphrates or the Danube scarcely disturbed 
the tranquillity of the Mediterranean lands." Toward the 
close of the period, one of the Christian fathers (Tertullian) 
wrote : 

"Each day the world becomes more beautiful, more wealthy, more 
splendid. No corner remains inaccessible. . . . Recent deserts 
bloom. . . . Forests give way to tilled acres. . . . Everywhere are 
houses, people, cities. Everywhere there is life." 

A few of the emperors at Rome, like Nero and Caligula, 
even in this "golden age of the Empire," were weak or wicked; 
but their follies and vices concerned only the nobles of the 
capital city. The government of the Empire as a whole went 
on with little change during their short reigns. To the vast 
body of the people of the Roman world, the crimes of an oc- 
casional tyrant were unknoWh. To them he seemed (like the 
good emperors) merely the symbol of the peace and prosperity 
which enfolded them. 

Trade and travel, peace and prosperity, and the mild and just Unity of 
Roman law made the world one in feeling. Rome won allegiance *®®"°s 
from the hearts and minds of men. Briton, Dacian, Gaul, 
African, Greek, Cappadocian, knew one another only as Romans. 
An Egyptian of the fourth century, the poet Claudian, cele- 
brated this world-wide patriotism in a noble ode : 

" Rome, Rome alone, has fpund the spell to charm. 
The tribes that bowed beneath her conquering arm ; 
Has given one name to the whole human race. 
And clasped and sheltered them in fond embrace, — 
Mother, not mistress ... 
This to her peaceful scepter all men owe, — 
That through the nations, wheresoe'er we go 
Strangers, we find a fatherland. Our home 
We change at will ; we count it sport to rpam 



382 THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 

Through distant Thule, or with sails unfurled 
Seek the most drear recesses of the world. 
Though we may tread Rhone's or Orontes' ^ shore, 
Yet are we all one nation evermore." 



III. ART AND LEARNING 

Painting and sculpture followed the old Greek models ; but 
the Roman art was architecture. Many of the world's most 
famous buildings belong to the Early Empire. Roman archi- 
tecture had more massive grandeur, and was fonder of orna- 
ment, than the Greek. Instead of the simple Doric or Ionic 
columns it commonly used the rich Corinthian, and it added, for 
its own especial features, the noble Roman arch and the dome. 

Rome, Alexandria, and Athens were the three great centers 
of learning. Each had its university, with vast libraries and 
many professorships. The early Ptolemies, we have seen 
(p. 233), founded the first such institution at Alexandria. 
Augustus established the one at Athens from his private fortune. 
Vespasian began the practice of paying salaries from the public 
treasury. And under Marcus Aurelius the government began 
to provide permanent endowments (of which only the income 
could be used each year), as we do for our universities.. 
The leading subjects were Latin and Greek literature, rhetoric, 
philosophy, mu^ic, arithmetic,^ geometry, and astronomy} Laiv 
was a specialty at Rome, and medicine at Alexandria. Rhodes 
was so famous for the teaching of oratory that Julius Caesar 
went there to study that art. University professors had the 
rank of Senators. They were paid good salaries, and were given 
pensions after twenty years of service. 

Every important city in the Empire had its grammar school, 
corresponding to an advanced high school or small college. 
Like the universities, to which they led, they had permanent 
endowments from the Roman government. 

1 A river of Syria. 

2 Arithmetic was an advanced subject when Roman numerals were used. 
' The first three subjects, the Hterary group, were the trivium; the last 

four, the mathematical group, were the quadrivium. 



SCHOOLS AND WRITERS 



383 



The schools of this class in Gaul and Spain were especially 
famous ; and noted instructors in Massilia, Autun, Narbonne, 
Lyons, Bordeaux, or Toulouse taught Latin grammar to noble 
youth drawn even from the Tiber side. The walls of the 
classrooms were painted with maps, dates, and lists of facts. 





A Detail from Trajan's Column (page 365) : Trajan sacrificing a bull 
at the bridge over the Danube, just completed by his soldiers. This 
bridge was a remarkable structure, — probably the most wonderful 
bridge in the world until the era of iron and steel bridge-work in the 
nineteenth century. 



The masters were appointed by the local magistrates, with 
life tenure, good pay, and exemption from taxation. 

All this education was for the upyer classes, but occasionally Schools for 
bright boys from the lower classes found some wealthy patron ® ^"'"^ 
to send them to a good school, and rich men and women some- 
times bequeathed money to schools in their home cities for the 



384 THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 

education of poor children. Davis' Readings (II, No. 80) tells 
of such an endowment, and (No. 79) gives Horace's story of 
how his father, a poor farmer, gave him the education that 
made it possible for him to become one of the most famous 
of poets. 

Literature Literature played a small part in Roman life until just be- 

fore the Empire. The following lists of names for the four 
periods, down to Marcus Aurelius, are not to be memorized, 
of course, but may be talked over in class. 

1. The "Age of Cicero," gave us Lucretius, perhaps the most 
sublime of all Latin poets, and Caesar's concise graphic historical 
narrative. Cicero himself remains the foremost orator of Rome 
and the chief master of the graceful Latin prose essay. 

2. For the glorious " Augustan Age " only a few of the many 
important writers can be mentioned. Horace (son of an Apulian 
freedman) wrote the most graceful of odes and most playful 
of satires. Vergil (from Cisalpine Gaul), the chief Roman poet, 
is best known to schoolboys by his epic, the Aeneid, but critics 
rank higher his Gcorgics, e±x\\x\?,\te poems of country life., Livy 
(Cisalpine Gaul) and Dionysius (an Asiatic Greek) wrote their 
great histories of Rome. Straho of Asia Minor (living at Alex- 
andria) produced a geography of the Roman world, and specu- 
lated on the possibility of a continent in the unexplored Atlantic 
between Europe and Asia. The last tivo authors wrote in Greek 
(p. 306). 

3. To the second half of the first century (after the Augustan 
Age) belong another host of great names : among them, the 
Jewish historian Josephus; Pliny the Elder {of Cisalpine Gaul), 
a scientist who perished at the eruption of Vesuvius in his zeal 
to observe the phenomena ; the stoic philosophers Epictetus, 
a Phrygian slave, and Seneca, a Roman noble of Spanish birth. 

4. For the second century, we have the charming Letters of 
Pliny the Younger, a Cisalpine Gaul, the satirical poetry of 
the Italian Juvenal, the philosophical and religious Thoughts 
of Marcus Aurelius (p. 396), the histories and biographies {in 



MILITARY SYSTEM 



385 



Greeh) of Appian, an Alexandrian, of Arrian, an Asiatic, of 
Plutarch, a Boeotian, and (in Latin) of Tacitus, a Roman noble. 
Science is represented chiefly by Galen, an Asiatic, who wrote 
Greek treatises on medicine (and who was for centuries looked 
back to as the highest medical authority), and by Ptolemy, an 
Egyptian astronomer, whose geography was the standard 
authority until the time of Columbus. Ptolemy unhappily 
abandoned the truer teachings of Aristafchus and Eratosthenes 
(p. 234), and taught that the heavens revolved about the earth 
for their center. 

It was in this century that the books of the Greek New Testa- 
ment received their present form. 

IV. DEFENSE AND REVENUE 

The Empire, unlike the Republic, waged few wars of con- 
quest : it stood on the defensive against barbarians. The 
standing army counted thirty legions. Auxiliaries and naval 
forces raised the total of troops at the highest to some 400,000. 
These were stationed almost wholly on the three exposed 
frontiers — the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. The 
inner provinces needed little policing : twelve hundred soldiers 
were enough to care for all Gaul. The civilized and Christian 
nations which now fill only the western half of the old Roman 
territory, with no outside barbarians to dread, have kept under 
arms for the past half century many times the army of the 
Roman emperors. 

The "Roman" army had become a body of disciplined 
mercenaries, with intense pride, however, in their fighting power 
and in the Roman name. After the first century, more and 
more the legions were renewed by enlistments on the frontiers, 
where they were stationed ; and in the third century, barbarian 
mercenaries became a large part of the army. From the hungry 
foes surging against its walls, the Empire drew the guardians 
of its peace. 

The legions were not wholly lost to useful work. In peace, 
"they raised the marvelous Roman roads through hundreds 



The army 
small in 
numbers 



Strong in 
discipline 



Industrial 
uses 



386 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



Veterans, 
as Roman 
citizens, 
colonize the 
provinces 



of miles of swamp and forest; they spanned great rivers with 
magnificent bridges ; they buih dikes to bar out the sea, and 
aqueducts and baths to increase the well-being of frontier 
cities." They proved, too, a noble school for commanders. 
Merit was carefully promoted, and military incompetence dis- 
appeared. Great generals followed one another in endless 
series, and several of the greatest emperors were soldiers who had 
risen from the ranks. 

At the expiration of their twenty years with the eagles,^ 
the veterans became full Roman citizens, no matter whence 




A German Bodyguard. — A detail from the Column of Marcus Aurelius. 



The 

frontiers 
as Augustus 
found them 



they had been recruited, and were commonly settled in colonies, 
with grants of land. Augustus says that he spent over ten 
million dollars in purchasing lands for military colonies in the 
provinces ; and this process continued, generation after genera- 
tion. In these new homes the veterans became the leading 
inhabitants, and, in particular, ihey helped to mix the many races 
of the Roman world into one. Spanish troops stationed in Switzer- 
land, Swiss in Britain, Panonians in Africa, Illyrians in Armenia, 
settled and married in these districts far from the lands of their 
birth. 

Julius Caesar left the Empire bounded by natural barriers 
on three sides and on part of the fourth : the North Sea and the 

' The Roman military standards had the form of eagles. 



THE FRONTIERS 



387 



Rhine to the northwest, the Atlantic on the west, the African 
and Arabian deserts on the south, Arabia and the upper 
Euphrates on the east, and the Black Sea to the northeast. 

The Euphrates limit was not altogether satisfactory. It 
left half the empire of Alexander to Oriental states, and let 
the great Parthian kingdom border dangerously upon the 
Roman world. At his death, Julius was just setting out upon 
a campaign to correct this danger ; but none of his successors, 
until Trajan, seriously thought of one. The only other unsafe 
line was on the north, in Europe, between the Rhine and the 
Black Sea. 

Augustus greatly improved the eastern half of this line by 
advancing the frontier north to the Danube. Then, in Germany, 
he planned to move the frontier from the Rhine to the Elbe. 
The line of the Danube and Elbe is much shorter than that of 
the Danube and Rhine, though it guards more territory (see 
map). Moreover, it could have been more easily defended, 
because the opening between the upper courses of these rivers 
is filled by the natural wall of the mountains of modern Bohemia 
and Moravia. But here the long success of Augustus was 
broken by his one failure. The territory between the Rhine 
and the Elbe was subdued, it is true, and it was held for some 
years. But in the year 9 a.d. the Germans rose again under 
the hero Hermann. Varus, the Roman commander, was en- 
trapped in the Teutoberg Forest, and in a three-days' battle his 
three legions were utterly annihilated (Davis' Readings, II, 
No. 62). 

The Roman dominion was at once swept back to the Rhine. 
This was the first retreat Rome ever made from territory 
she had once occupied. Roman writers recognized the serious 
natiu-e of the reverse. Said one of them : "From this disaster 
it came to pass that that Empire which had not stayed its 
march at the shore of ocean did halt at the banks of the Rhine." 
The aged Augustus was broken by the blow, and for days 
moaned repeatedly, "O Varus, Varus! give me back my 
legions!" x\t his death, five years later, he bequeathed to 



Augustus 
reaches the 
Danube, 
but fails 
of the Elbe 



388 THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 

his successors the advice to be content with the boundaries 
as they stood. This pohcy, on the German frontier, was adopted 
permanently ; and Domitian made up as well as he could for 
the lack of the natural wall of Bohemia, by building a line 
of forts and castles, joined in places by long earthen ramparts, 
along the exposed stretch of 336 miles from the upper Danube 
to the upper Rhine. 

The general result was both efficient and grand. About 
the civilized world was drawn a broad belt of stormy waves 
and desolate sands ; and at its weaker gaps — on the Rhine, 
the Danube, the Euphrates, and at these Walls of Domitian 
and Hadrian — stood the mighty, sleepless legions to watch 
and ward. 

Taxes under The taxation by the Empire during these prosperous centuries 
ttie Early ^^^ lighter than most of the provinces had known under their 
earlier native rulers. Every landholder paid a tax on his land. 
In the towns, every citizen and every trader paid a poll tax. 
Tariffs were sometimes collected at the frontiers of a province 
on goods entering or departing. Roman citizens paid a tax 
of five per cent on inheritances. Furthermore, Africa and 
Egypt paid a peculiar tax in grain to feed the hungry masses 
of the great cities. Egypt was expected to furnish 144 million 
bushels a year ; but if the season was bad the Emperor usually 
lightened this amount. 

What did the government do for the people in return for the 
taxes it took from them? Many things which a government 
does to-day, it did not do. It did not build many hospitals or 
asylums, or maintain complete systems of education, or care 
systematically for the public health, though the government of 
the Roman Empire came nearer doing these things (pp. 382, 
394) than any government in the world had done, or was to 
do again until very recent times. Two things in particular it 
did do. It kept the "good Roman peace" and it built and kept 
up the Roman roads, — the bonds of union and means of inter- 
course throughout the Roman world, 



MORALS 389 

This meant a huge expense. A mile of road built by Hadrian 
in southern Italy cost $4000. On the frontiers and in mountain 
districts, the cost must have been many times as much. The 
one island of Sicily had a thousand miles of such roads. In 
France more than thirteen thousand miles can still be traced. 
Merely to keep this vast road system in repair called for a large 
revenue. 

V. MORALS 

Some historians paint a black picture of Roman morals under Some blots 
the Empire. For the capital, and for the court of a Nero or °" * 5 
Commodus, the truth is black enough. At all times, many of of the 
the great nobles were sunk in coarse debauchery, and the rabble "^P"'® 
of the great capitals was ignorant and cruel. 

Then the Empire had certain evil customs that particularly 
shock a modern reader. To avoid the cost and trouble of rear- 
ing children, it was horribly common for the poorer classes to 
expose their infants to die. The growth of divorce alarmed 
good people, as in our own day. Slavery threw its shadow 
across the Roman world. At the gladiatorial sports, delicate 
ladies thronged the benches of the amphitheater, without shrink- 
ing at the agonies of the dying ; and the games grew in size and 
in fantastic character until they seem to us a blot beyond any- 
thing else in human history. 

Under Trajan one set of games continued 123 days. In a 
single day's games, when the Colosseum was first opened by 
Titus, 5000 animals were slain. The jaded spectators demanded 
ever new novelties, and the exhibitors sought out fantastic forms 
of combat. Thousands of men fought at once in hostile armies. 
Sea fights were imitated on artificial lakes. Distant regions 
were scoured for new varieties of beasts to slay and be slain. 
Women entered the arena as gladiators, and dwarfs engaged 
one another in deadly combat. The wealthy aristocrats laid 
wagers upon the skill of their favorite gladiators, as with us 
at the prize ring. 

Yet it is certain that a picture made mainly from such ma- 



390 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



terials is grossly misleading. ^ There was much good, though 
it made less noise than the evil. Some old, rude virtues were 
going out of fashion ; but new, gentler virtues were coming in. 
The unexhausted populations of North Italy and of Gaul, 
Spain, and Britain, and the great middle class over all the 
Empire, remained essentially sound in morals. Witty satirists 
like Juvenal (p. 384) or stern moralists like Tacitus (p. 385), 
from whose scattered remarks the black pictures are largely 




The Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater) at Rome, built by Vespasian and 
Titus. Cf. page 314. It covers six acres, and the walls rise 150 feet. 
It seated 45,000 spectators. For centuries, in the Middle Ages, its ruins 
were used as a quarry for the palaces of Roman nobles, but its huge size 
has prevented its complete destruction. 



made . up, are no more to be accepted as authority, without 
correction, than racy wits and scolding preachers in our own 
day. They do not show all the picture. 

On the whole, the first two centuries show a steady gain, even 
if we look only at pagan society. The Letters of Pliny reveal, 
in the court circle itself, a society high-minded, refined, and 
virtuous. Pliny is a type of the finest gentleman of to-day, 
in delicacy of feeling, sensitive honor, genial and thoughtful 

1 Capes' Early Empire, 223-227, has a wholesome statement about the 
danger of exaggerating the evils. 



MORALS 



391 



courtesy. 1 Marcus Aurelius and his father illustrate like quali- 
ties on the throne. The slave philosopher Epictetus (p. 384) 
shows them in the lowest state of life. All these people are sur- 
rounded by friends whom they think good and happy. One 
husband inscribed upon his wife's monument : " Only once did 
she cause me sorrow — and that was by her death." Another 
praises in his wife "purity, loyalty, affection, a sense of duty, a 
gentle nature, and whatever other qualities God would wish to 




Interior of the Colosseum {Flavian Amphitheater) To-i>ay. 



give woman." The tombstone of a poor physician declares that 
" to all the needy who came to him, he gave his services free of 
charge." Over the grave of a little girl there is inscribed : 
"She rests here in the soft cradle of the Earth . . . comely, 
charming, keen of mind, gay in her talk and play. If there be 
aught of compassion in the gods, bear her aloft to the stars and 

1 There is a charming essay, A Roman Gentleman under the Empire (Pliny) , 
by Harriet Walters Preston, in The Atlantic for June, 1886. Thomas' 
Rcmian Life, chs. xi and xiv, and Capes' Antonines, ch. v, present similar 
pictures. See Davis' Readings, II, Nos. 69, 70, 74, 88, 106, 107. 



392 THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 

the light." These things are more truly typical of Roman 
society than the monstrous crimes of a few individuals. 

Certain definite gains appear. The position of women was 
improved. Charity to the poor abounded. Animals were 
treated more kindly. Slavery grew milder. Law showed a gentler 
spirit. All this was true without referring to the Christian 
part of society, of which we shall speak later (pp. 404 ff.). 




The Way of Tombs at Pompeii. — Each Roman city buried its dead out- 
side one of its gates along the highway, which therefore was lined for a 
great distance with marble monuments or the simpler raised headstones 
that are also shown in this picture. The ruins shown alongside the 
Appian Way (p. 270) are tombs and monuments. The disorders of later 
centuries destroyed most of these monuments in Italy, though we do still 
have many interesting inscriptions from them. At Pompeii the volcanic 
covering preserved them almost intact. 

An interesting "back to the land" movement proved that 
Roman gentlemen could still value simple delights above the 
artificial pleasures of the court. The poet Martial (150 a.d.) 
writes of country life with true enthusiasm, — where a man can 
be "rich with the spoils of grove and field, unfold before the 
fire his well-filled hunting nets, lift the leaping fish from the 
quivering line, draw forth the yellow honey from the cask, 



MORALS 393 

while his own eggs are cooking over a fire that has not cost a 
penny. My wish [he conchides] is that the man who loves not 
me may not love this." 

And if we suspect that there was some literary pretense in 
this from an ex-courtier, the same suspicion cannot be held 
in the case of a certain Similis, an iron-handed soldier who had 
been commander of the praetorians in Hadrian's time. At 
sixty-nine he resigned his high office and spent his last seven 
3'^ears among green fields. On his tombstone he caused to be 
carved : " Here lies Similis, who existed seventy-six years, and 
lived seven." i 

Some of the gains just mentioned need more detail. 

1. Woman became the equal of man in law, and his Com- The im- 

panion instead of his servant in the family. Plutarch and ^'^"^f . 
^ ..... , position of 

Seneca, for the first time in history, insisted that men be judged woman 

by the same moral standard as women ; and Roman law adopted 

this principle in the decrees of Antoninus. Plutarch's precepts 

on marriage "fall little if at all below any of modern days," 

and his own family life afforded a beautiful ideal of domestic 

happiness. He also urges the highest intellectual culture for 

women ; and says the English historian, Lecky : 

"Intellectual culture was much diffused among them, and we meet 
with noble instances of large and accomplished minds united with all 
the gracefulness of intense womanhood and all the fidelity of the truest 
love. . . . When Paetus, a noble Roman, was ordered by Nero to put 
himself to death, his friends knew that his wife Arria, with her love and 
her heroic fervor, would not survive him. Her son-in-law tried to 
dissuade her from suicide by saying : 'If 7 am called upon to perish, 
would you wish your daughter to die with me ? ' She answered, ' Yes, 
if she has then lived with you as long and happily as I with Paetus.' 
Paetus for a moment hesitated to strike the fatal blow, but Arria, 
taking the dagger, plunged it deeply into her breast, and, dying, handed 
it to her husband, exclaiming, ' My Paetus, it does not pain ! ' " 

Women became physicians, — though their practice was re- 
. stricted to other women, — and they entered various trades. As 

1 Dr. Davis' Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome, 284-287, gives these 
and other illustrations. 



394 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



in our da^^ moreover, they seem to have had more time or more 
taste for literature than their husbands had. The scolding 
Juvenal, whose vanity may have been offended, rails at the 
sort of woman who at table " weighs in the balance Homer and 
Vergil [so that] teachers of rhetoric are vanquished [and] not 
even a lawyer . . . may speak. ... I hate the woman who 
is always bringing up grammatical rules, and who recalls verses 
imknown to me." 




The Pantheon To-day: "Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods." 
(Read the rest of Byron's fine description in Canto IV of Childe Harold.) 
Agrippa, victor of Actium and chief minister of Augustus, built this 
temple in the Campus Martius ; and it was rebuilt, in its present form, 
by Hadrian — who, however, left the inscription in honor of Agrippa. 
The. structure is 132 feet in diameter and of the same height, surmounted 
by a majestic dome that originally flashed with tiles of bronze. The 
interior is broadly flooded with light from an aperture in the dome 26 
feet in diameter. The inside walls were formed of splendid columns of 
yellow marble, with gleaming white capitals supporting noble arches, upon 
which again rested more pillars and another row of arches — up to the 
base of the dome. Under the arches, in pillared recesses, stood the 
statues of the gods of all religions, for this grand temple was symbolic 
of the grander toleration and unity of the Roman world. Time has dealt 
gently with it, and almost alone of the buildings of its day it has lasted 
to ours. 



MORALS 395 

2. There was a vast amount of public and private charity. Charity 
Homes for poor children and orphan girls were established. 
Wealthy men loaned money below the regular rate of interest, 

and provided free medicine for the poor. Tacitus tells how, 
after a great accident near Rome, the rich opened their houses 
and gave their wealth to relieve the sufferers. Every city, large 
or small, received large gifts of money from its wealthy sons — 
not only to build temples and libraries and town halls, and to set 
up noble statues, but also to repair pavements and build sewers 
(Davis' Readings, II, No. 77). 

True, there was a dark side to this sort of generosity. The 
people did less and less for themselves, and fell more and more 
completely under the control of great riches. They came to 
choose only wealthy men for public office, because of the ex- 
pectation of public benefactions from them. Ever louder grew 
the cry for "bread and games." 

3. Slavery grew milder. Emancipation became so common Slavery 
that faithful household slaves were freed commonly after six ™"°^'" 
years' service. The horrible story of Pollio (a noble who threw 

a slave alive to the lampreys in a fish pond for carelessly break- 
ing a precious vase) is often given as typical of Roman treat- 
ment of slaves. This is misleading. That crime occurred at 
the very beginning of the Empire, while there was yet no check 
in law upon a master; but even then, Augustus, by a stretch 
of humane despotism, ordered all the tableware in Pollio's house 
to be broken and his fish ponds to be filled up. There was 
an old law of the Republic which ordered that if a master was 
murdered by a slave, all the slaves of the household should be 
put to death. Public opinion now made it impossible to con- 
tinue to enforce this law, and under Hadrian it was modified 
so as to apply only to slaves within hearing of the master's 
calls for help. During the reign of Nero, a special judge was 
appointed to hear the complaints of slaves and to punish 
cruelties to them, and Seneca tells us that cruel masters were 
jeered in the streets. The same philosopher exclaims — 'Ts 



396 



THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 



not the slave of the same stuff as you, his master!" (See 
Davis' Readings, II, No. 98.) 

4. Sympathies broadened. The unity of the vast Roman 
world prepared the way for the thought that all men are brothers. 
Philosophers were fond of dwelling upon that idea. Said Mar- 
cus Aurelius, " As emperor I am a Roman ; but as a man my 
city is the world." Even the rabble in the Roman theater was 
wont to applaud the line of Terence ; " I am a man ; every 
calamity that affects man concerns me." The age prided itself. 




Cross-Section of the Pantheon. 

justly, upon its enlightened humanity, much as our own does. 
Trajan instructed a provincial governor not to act upon anon- 
ymous accusations, because such conduct "does not belong to 
our age." 

5. This broad humanity was reflected in imperial law. The 
harsh law of the Republic became humane. Women and 
children shared its protection. Torture was limited. The 
rights of the accused were better recognized : from this time 
dates the maxim, " Better to let the guilty escape than to punish 
the innocent." "All men by the law of nature are equal" 
became a law maxim, through the great jurist Ulpian (p. 403). 
Slavery, he argued, had been created only by the lower law. 



MORALS 397 

enacted not by nature but by man. Therefore, if one man 
claimed another as his slave, the benefit of any possible doubt 
was to be given to the one so claimed. (It is curious to remember 
that the rule was just the other way in nearly all Christian 
countries through the Middle Ages, and in the United States 
under the Fugitive Slave laws from 1793 to the Civil War.) 

The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius (p. 369) is one of the world's 
noblest books, closer to the spirit of Christ than any other 
writing of the pagan world. Some idea of its teachings may be 
obtained from a few extracts. 

Aurelius thanks the gods "for a good grandfather, good parents, a 
good sister, good teachers, good associates, and good friends." 

"From my mother I learned piety, and abstinence not only from evil 
deeds but from evil thoughts." From a tutor, "... to read carefully, 
and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book." 

"There are briers in the road? Then turn aside from them, but do 
not add, 'Why were such things made?' Thou wilt be ridiculed by a 
man who is acquainted with nature, as thou wouldst be by a carpenter 
or shoemaker if thou didst complain that there were shavings and 
cuttings in his shop." 

"The best way to avenge thyself is not to become Uke the wrong- 
doer." 

"When thou wishest to deUght thyself, think of the virtues of those 
who live with thee." 

"Love men; revere the gods." 

"Suppose that men curse thee, or kill thee ... if a man stand by a 
pure spring and curse it, the spring does not cease to send up whole- 
some water." 

"To say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a 
stream, and all that belongs to the soul is a dream and a vapor ; life 
is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after fame is oblivion. What 
then is there about which we ought seriously to employ ourselves? 
This one thing — just thoughts and social acts, words that do not lie, 
and temper which accepts gladly all that happens." 

"Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O 
Universe ! Nothing is too early or too late which is in due time for 
thee ! Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature ! 
From thee are all things ; in thee are all things ; to thee all things re- 
turn. The poet says. Dear city of Cecrops ; and shall not I say, Dear 
city of Zeus?" 



398 THE EARLY EMPIRE, TO 192 a.d. 

" Many grains of frankincense upon the same altar ; one falls before, 
another after; but it makes no difference." 

"It is sweet to live if there be gods, and sad to die if there be none." 

For Further Reading. — Davis' Readings, II, to No. 108. For 
those who wish to read further on this important period, the best and 
most readable material will be found in Jones' Roman Empire (an ex- 
cellent one- volume work), chs. i-vi; Capes' Early Empire and The 
Antonines; Thomas' Roman Ldfe; Preston and Dodge's Private Life of 
the Romans; or Johnston's Private Life of the Romans. 

Exercise. — (1) To the table of dates, add 9 a.d., 14, 69, 180. 
(2) Locate on map of Rome, p. 402, all buildings and monuments 
mentioned in this chapter and shown there. 




A Roman Chariot-Race. — A modern imaginative painting. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 



THE THIRD CENTURY 



BARRACK EMPERORS" 



The misrule of Commodus left the throne the sport of the 
soldiery. The next ninety years (193-284) saw twenty-seven 
"barrack emperors." Once the praetorians auctioned off the 
imperial purple to the highest bidder among the Roman nobles 
(Davis' Readings, II, No. 71). Many reigns were counted by 
days, not years. Twenty-three rulers were slain by revolting 
legions, and two more fell in battle against barbarian invaders. 
Several of these phantom emperors were well-meaning and 
capable ; but only two left mark enough upon the age to need 
mention by name — Severus and Aurelian (below). 

After the murder of Commodus (p. 369), two Roman nobles Septimius 

in quick succession held the imperial office for some four months ^^''^®™S' 
. ■ . . . 193-21 I 

in all. Then Septimius Severus, general of the legions on the 

Danube, grasped the prize, and held it firmly for eighteen years, 

— a long oasis of peace and plenty in that troubled century. 

Severus was a native of North Africa. He was a clear-headed, 

industrious man, sternly devoted to duty. He greatly admired 

the Antonine emperors, and now took the name Antoninus 

in addition to his own. Most of his reign he spent in the East, 

where the Parthians were growing more and more dangerous ; 

but he died in Britain — at the opposite frontier — where he 

399 



400 ROMAN EMPIRE: THIRD CENTURY 

had just been strengthening Hadrian's Wall and repelling the 
Picts. On the night of his death he gave for the watchword, 
"Let us work" {Labor emus). After his rule, the decline of the 
Empire was rapid, not only in the defense of the frontier but also 
in material prosperity and in literature. 

We have seen how the torrent of barbarian invasion began 
to beat again upon the ramparts of civilization, in the days 
of the best of the emperors, Marcus Aurelius. The Moorish 
tribes were on the move in Africa ; the Parthians, whom Trajan 
had humbled, again menaced the Euphrates ; and Tartars, 
Slavs, Finns, and Germans burst upon the Danube. Aurelius 
gave most of his reign to campaigns on the frontier. 

Chapters of his Thoughts (p. 396) are dated "Among the Quadi" 
and "At Carnuntum." The Quadi were a German people in Bohemia, 
and Carnuntum was a town on the Danube near the modern Vienna. 
Aurelius spent three years in one campaign on the Danube, and he 
finally died in camp on the Save, a tributory of the Danube, of a con- 
tagious camp fever. Cf. p. 369. 

For the time, indeed, Rome beat off the attack; but from 

this date she stood always on the defensive, with exhaustless 

swarms of fresh enemies surging about her defenses ; and after 

the reign of Severus they began to burst through. 

The Persian Early in the third century the Parthian empire gave way 

^^^°^ to a new Persian kingdom under the Sassanidae kings. This 

Persian power for a time seemed the great danger to the Roman 

world. In 250 and 260 its armies poured across the Euphrates. 

Antioch was captured. Sapor, a Persian king, took captive a 

Roman emperor (Valerian) and bridled and saddled him for 

a horse. 

New New German tribes, too, — the mightier foe, as events were 

German ^^ prove, — appeared on the European frontier. The Alemanni 

crossed the Rhine and maintained themselves in Gaul for two 

years (236-238). In the fifties, bands of Franks swept over 

Gaul and Spain. The Goths seized the province of Dacia 

(p. 365), and raided the Balkan European provinces almost at 

will for twenty years. In the sixties, their fleets, of five hundred 



"BARRACK EMPERORS" 401 

sail, issuing from the Black Sea, ravaged the Mediterranean 
coasts, sacking Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Sparta (Davis' 
Readings, II, No. 72). 

Population fell away. In the year 166, a new Asiatic plague Population 
swept from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, carrying off, we are ^^ ■^^°^~ 
told, half the inhabitants of the Empire. For the next hundred decline 
years the pestilence returned at intervals, desolating wide regions 
and demoralizing industry. 

The disaster was the more deadly because population had 
already become stationary. The reasons for this previous falling ■ 
off in population are complex. A high standard of comfort 
and a dislike for large families, as in modern France, was one 
cause. Then the civil wars caused vast loss of life, and bar- 
barian raids sometimes swept off almost the whole population 
of a province to die in bitter slavery in German forests. Marcus 
Aurelius compelled the Quadi, a small German people, to restore 
50,000 such Roman captives at one time. Still more deadly 
was Roman slavery itself within the empire. The wealthy 
classes commonly do not have large families. Population grows 
from the large families of the working classes. But in the Roman 
world, the place of free workmen was taken largely by slaves, 
and slaves rarely left families. If they had children, the master 
"exposed" the infants, since it was easier and more convenient 
to buy a new slave (from the captives made by the legions on 
the frontiers) than to rear one. 

Besides, the competition of slave labor ground into the dust 
what free labor there was, — so that working people could 
not afford to rear a large family, and were driven to the cruel 
practice of exposure of infants. 

For all these causes, "year by year, the human harvest was 
bad," and the gaps left by the pestilence reniained unfilled. 
The fatal disease of the later Empire was lack of men. 

After the second century great names cease in literature and Decay in 
science. Philosophy and theology flourished, but they had ^®^'^'^^"S 
become a dreary waste of controversy. We have multitudes 



402 



ROMAN EMPIRE: THIRD CENTURY 



of "Apologies" for Christianity from the Church Fathers, like 
Lactantiits, Tertullian, and Origen (all three Africans), and volume 




1. Colosseum. 

2. Arch of Constantine. 

3. Arch of Titus. 

4. Via Sacra. 

5. Via Nova. 

6. Vicus Tuscus. 

7. Vicus Jugarius. 

8. Arch of Septimius Seve- 

rus. 

9. Clivus Capitolinus. 



10. Temple of Jupiter Cap- 

itolinus. 

11. Arch. 

12. Column of Trajan. 

13. Column of Antonius. 

14. Baths of Agrippa. 

15. Pantheon. 

16. Theater of Pompey. 

17. Portico of Pompey. 

18. Circus Flaminius. 



19. Theater of Marcellus. 

20. Forum Holitorium. 

21. Forum Boarium. 

22. Mausoleum of Augustus. 

23. Mausoleum of Hadrian. 

24. Baths of Constantine. 

25. Baths of Diocletian. 

26. Baths of Titus. 

27. Baths of Caracalla. 

28. Amphitheatrum Cas- 

trense. 



upon volume against them from the New Platonists, like Plotinus 
and his disciple Porphyry (Asiatics). Works on Christian 
doctrine and practice were written also by St. Clement (of 



"BARRACK EMPERORS" 403 

Alexandria) and St. Cyprian (of Carthage). The one advance 
is in Roman law. The third century is the age of the great 
jurists, of whom Ulpian is the most famous. 

Happily, the decay of the Roman world was again checked. Aurelian, 
The army wearied of disorder, and in 270 it set a great leader 270-275 
upon the throne. Aurelian (270-275) was an Illyrian peasant 
who had risen from the ranks. He ruled only five years, but his 
achievements rival those of the five years of the first Caesar. 
He reorganized the army and restored the boundaries, driving 
back the barbarians beyond the Danube and the Rhine, but 
abandoning Dacia (p. 365) beyond the Danube to the Goths. 
Zenobia, the great queen who had set up a rival Arabian empire 
at Palmyra, he brought captive to Rome (Davis' Readings, II, 
No. 73), and he recovered Gaul, which for years had been a 
separate kingdom. 

At one moment in this busy reign, the Alemanni (p. 400) 
penetrated to the Po, and threw Italy into a panic. No hostile 
army had been seen in that peninsula since Hannibal — for 
almost five hundred years — and the proud capital had spread 
out unguarded far beyond her early ramparts. Aurelian 
repulsed the invaders and then built new walls about Rome, — 
a somber symbol of a new age. 

Then, just as the great Emperor was ready to take up the 
work of internal reform for the Empire, death snatched him 
away; and after a brief interval the task fell to Diocletian 
(p. 412). Before taking up that story, we must look at the 
rise of Christianity, which was soon now to be the strongest 
force in the Empire. 



CHAPTER XL 

RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 

Jesus of Nazareth was born, probably in 4 B.C./ at Bethle- 
hem, a hamlet of Judea. He grew up as the son of a humble 
carpenter in an obscure corner of the Roman world. At 
thirty, in the reign of Tiberius, he began to teach publicly 
throughout Judea. The poorer people in the country districts 
heard him gladly ; and the priests, angry at his quiet disregard 
of religious ceremonies, began to fear his influence. 

Judea was seething with discontent at Roman rule, and the 
masses were looking eagerly for a miraculous Messiah to appear, 
to lead them in a glorious war against the foreign conqueror 
and to restore the Jewish empire of David and Solomon. Many 
of those who gathered about Jesus believed that he would do 
these things. In vain he declared to them, "My kingdom is 
not of this world." The expectations among the people gave 
a handle to his enemies. The priests declared that he called 
himself King of the Jews, and that he was stirring up rebellion 
against Rome. The Jewish court, however, could not put a 
man to death without the consent of the Roman governor. 
That officer, Pontius Pilate, declared that he found no truth in 
the charges ; but with careless Roman contempt, he let the 
clamoring priests have their way, and delivered Jesus to them 
to be crucified with two thieves. 

The public life of Jesus filled only three years ; and his work 
had been confined to Palestine. In spite of cruel persecutions, 
his followers there continued to preach his teachings. At first, 

1 The date of Christ's birth was computed, some six hundred years later, 
by a Greek monk, who put the date at least four years too late. 

404 



RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 



405 



however, they felt that the new reUgion was only for their own 
" chosen people," but soon, there arose among them a man with 
a nobler vision. 

Paul was a native of Tarsus ^ in Cilicia, "no mean city," and 
he held the prized Roman citizenship. His family were Jews, 
and he had been brought up, he tells us, in the strictest sect of 
the old Hebrew religion. After the crucifixion, he took a 




Jerusalem To-day : Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives. 



zealous part in breaking up the little Christian congregations ; 
but after witnessing the glorious martyrdom of Stephen, Paul 
was converted to the truth he had been persecuting. Then he 
soon became one of the leading apostles. His early life and his 
education had given him more acquaintance with the great world 
than the other disciples had, and he saw that Christianity ought 
to become the religion of all peoples. 

1 There were colonies of Jews in many cities of the East. 



406 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE 



The rest of his hfe he gave to preaching in Asia and Europe, 
supporting himself meanwhile by his trade of tent-making. 
He founded churches in Antioch and in other cities throughout 
Syria and Cilicia, and crossed over to Macedonia and Greece, 
preaching especially in Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, and 
Corinth. On his return to Jerusalem, he was arrested by the 
Jewish priests. The Roman governor was about to condemn 
him to death ; but his Roman citizenship saved his life for the 
time, and, after a weary imprisonment, he " appealed to Caesar," 
as a Roman citizen had the privilege of doing. Accordingly 
he was sent to Rome, where he seems to have lived for some 
years under arrest but with a good deal of freedom of action, 
preaching to Christian congregations there and writing letters 
(Epistles) to his converts in other cities. He perished in 
Nero's persecution after the great fire. 

At the death of Paul, some thirty years after the death of 
Christ, there were Christian congregations, we know from the 
Book of Acts, in all the large cities of the eastern part of the 
Empire. These congregations were then made up almost solely 
of the very poor. Women were particularly numerous and 
influential among them. The religion of mercy and gentleness 
and hope appealed especially to the weak and downtrodden ; 
so far, it got no hearing from the rich and powerful and happy. 
The first Roman historian to make any important mention of 
the Christians is the good Tacitus (p. 385) in 115 a.d., and, 
it is plain, he had heard only misleading slander about them. 
He refers to them only as "haters of the human race" and 
practicers of a "pernicious superstition." But a hundred years 
later, Christianity had its converts among the learned and noble 
in all parts of the Empire. 

This rapid growth of the religion was due partly to the Empire. 
(1) The gentle spirit of the age (p. 394), and its idea of human 
brotherhood (p. 395), prepared the way for a religion of humility, 
self-sacrifice, and love. But (2) even so, Christianity could 
have made its way beyond Judea only by slow degrees, had it 
not been for the unity of the world under Rome. If Asia 



RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 407 

Minor, Greece, and Italy had remained split up in hundreds 
of petty states, with different languages and customs, how could 
Paul have made his way from city to city, or found his audiences, 
or have been able to speak to them? The political and social 
union of the Mediterranean world under Rome paved the 
way for its union under the Christian religion. 

The inner sources of power in Christianity lay, of course, in Inner 
its teaching of love, purity, and hope. The old gods had been p^J^^ 
vague and dread forces, to be worshiped so that they might not 
afflict men. This pagan feeling gave way now to a fervent trust 
in a tender Father. The old ideas of a future life, gloomy or 
at least shadowy, were replaced by a happy certainty of a bliss- 
ful life beyond the grave. A few men of the pagan world, like 
Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, had thought of God and duty 
somewhat as Jesus did. But Christianity made these lofty 
speculations of a few lonely minds the common conviction of 
all men — " the truisms of the village school, the proverbs of 
the cottage and the alley." 

The Empire had tolerated broadly the religions of all nations, Causes of 
except those that fostered grossly unmoral practices. Why Persecution 
then were the Christians persecuted? 

The fiendish torments with which Nero amused his brutal 
court, we have explained, were not properly a religious perse- 
cution ; but several true persecutions have been mentioned, . 
some of them under the best of the emperors. Four causes 
help to explain this. 

1. Rome tolerated, and supported, all religions; but she Non- 
expected all the inhabitants of the Empire, in return, to tolerate 
and support the religion of the Empire and the worship of the 
emperors. The Christians, alone, refused to do this, pro- 
claiming loudly that all worship but their own was sinful and 
idolatrous. To the populace this seemed likely to bring down 
the wrath of the gods upon the whole community. To en- 
lightened men it indicated at least a dangerously stubborn and 
treasonable temper. 



conformists 



408 



RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 



2. Secret societies were feared and forbidden by the Empire, 
on political grounds. Even the enhghtened Trajan instructed 
Phny to forbid the organization of a firemen's company in a large 
city of his province, because such associations were likely to 
become "factious assemblies." The church of that day was 
a vast, highly organized, widely diffused, secret society. As 
such it was illegal, and good rulers feared that it might be 
dangerous to the public safety. 





Interior of Trajan's Basilica, as "restored" by Canina. The basilica 
(from a Greek word meaning the king's judgment hall) became the 
favorite Roman form of building for law courts a little before the Empire. 
(Cf. explanation of the Forum, p. 349.) The Christians, when they 
came to power, adopted this type of building for their worship, and, with 
little change of ground plan, it became the medieval cathedral. 



'Pacifists" The Christians kept apart from most public amusements, 
either because those amusements were immoral, like the " gladia- 
torial games," or because they were connected with festivals 
to heathen gods. This conduct the people looked upon as 
unsocial, and they charged the Christians with "hating the 
human race." Because Christ had preached peace, many 
Christians refused to join the legions, or to fight, if drafted. 
This was near to treason, inasmuch as a prime duty of the Roman 



PERSECUTION BY THE EMPIRE 



409 



world was to repel barbarism. Some of these extreme "paci- 
fists" and "conscientious objectors" irritated their neighbors 
by even refusing to illuminate their houses or garland their 
portals in honor of national triumphs. 

3. Clean lives marked the early Christians, to a notable Slander 
degree. Every sin was punished before the whole congregation. 
The church was a vast association for mutual helpfulness in 
pure living. Any member who was known to have worshiped 
pagan gods, or blasphemed, or borne false witness, was dis- 
missed from Christian fellowship. But, strangely enough, 
pagan society knew nothhig of this side of the early church. The 



J^^\' 


Aisle 






Nave 


^--T_ 


Aisle 



General Plan of a Basilica. 

Jews accused the Christians of all sorts of crimes, and, partic- 
ularly, of horrible orgies in the secret "love-feasts" (communion 
suppers). If a child disappeared — lost or kidnaped by some 
slave-hunter — the rumor spread at once that it had been eaten 
by the Christians in their private feasts. Such accusations 
were accepted, carelessly, by Roman society, because the Chris- 
tian meetings were secret, and because there had really been such 
licentious rites in some religions from the East that Rome had 
been forced to crush. 



The first century, except for the horrors in Rome under Attitude of 

Nero, afforded no persecution until its very close. In 95 there govem- 

^ '' menttowarc 

was a persecution, not very severe, and lasting only a few persecution 
months. Under Trajan we see spasmodic local persecutions 
arising from popular hatred, but not instigated by the govern- 



410 RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 

ment. The story of one of these is instructive. Pliny (p. 372), 
a high-souled gentleman of refined tastes, was one of Trajan's 
provincial governors in Asia. In his province many persons 
were accused by the people, sometimes anonymously, of being 
Christians and of committing crimes in connection with their 
religion. Pliny took pains to investigate, even using torture 
upon two "deaconesses." He was impressed by the lack of 
evidence for anything criminal ; but when the accused men 
refused to worship Roman gods, after three warnings, " I order 
them away to prison. For I do not doubt, be their crime what- 
ever it may, that their . . . inflexible obstinacy deserves punish- 
ment." The number of such offenders grew so rapidly, how- 
ever, and they came forward so willingly to martyrdom, that the 
well-meaning Pliny was embarrassed, and wrote to the Emperor 
for special instructions. Trajan directed him not to seek them 
out and to pay no attention to anonymous accusations (p. 395), 
but added that if Christians were brought before him, and then 
refused to sacrifice to the gods of the Empire, they must be 
punished. 

Hadrian and Antoninus Pius strove to repress popular out- 
breaks against the Christians. Aurelius, in the latter part of 
his reign, permitted a persecution. On the whole, during the 
second century, the Christians were legally subject to punish- 
ment ; but the law against them was rarely enforced. Still it 
is well to remember that even then many noble men and women 
died in torture rather than deny their faith. (Read the story 
of Saint Perpetua in Davis' Readings, II, No. 110, and see 
alsoNos. Ill and 112.) 

The third century was an age of anarchy and decay. The 
few able rulers strove strenuously to restore society to its 
ancient order. One great obstacle to this restoration seemed 
to them to be this new religion, with its secret meetings and 
its hostility to Roman patriotism. This century, accordingly, 
was an age of definitely planned persecution by the government. 

But by this time Christianity was too strong. It had come 
to count nobles and rulers in its ranks. And even now the 



PERSECUTION BY THE EMPIRE 411 

persecution was not universal enough to endanger a vital faith. 
It did give rise to multitudes of heroic martyrdoms which make 
a glorious page in human history ; but the effect of these upon 
Roman society justifies the saying, "The blood of the martyrs 
is the seed of the church." The final victory of the new religion 
over the Empire was near at hand. 



CHAPTER XLI 



FOURTH CENTURY: PARTNERSHIP EMPERORS 



I. DIOCLETIAN REFORMS THE GOVERNMENT 

The last and greatest of the " barrack emperors " was 
Diocletian, a stern Illyrian soldier (like Aurelian) and the 
grandson of a slave. Seizing the scepter with a strong hand 
on the death of Aurelian, he established victorious peace 
on all frontiers, and ruled firmly for twenty-one years. He 
so reformed the government as to do away with the age of 
"barrack emperors." 

The disorder of the third century had arisen in the main 
from three causes : 

1. The succession to the imperial power was not clearly 
marked out in advance. The death of an emperor, therefore, 
was often the signal for combat between ambitious claimants. 

2. The emperor had too much to do. He could not ward 
off Persians on the Euphrates and Germans on the Rhine, 
and also supervise closely the government of forty provinces. 
The bulky correspondence between Trajan and Pliny (governor 
of a not very important province) shows the minute oversight 
that industrious emperors attempted. With average rulers, or 
in trying times, such a system was likely to break down. 

3. The provincial governor had too much power. In great 
frontier provinces, especially, the governor was often a success- 
ful general also. Such a governor, with a devoted army at 
his back, might easily feel able to defy the emperor. Some 
governor had rebelled for nearly every year of the century. 

Diocletian met these evils by four reforms : 
1. He introduced a system of "partnership emperors." 
He chose Maximian, a rough soldier but an able man and faithful . 

412 



DIOCLETIAN 



413 



friend, for his colleague. Diocletian kept the Eastern half of 
the Empire under his own direct control ; Maximian took the 
Western half. The two rulers were equal in dignity. Each 
was Imperator Caesar Augustus. 

This was not a partition of the Empire into two empires. 
It loas only a way of dividing up the burden of government 
between two joint rulers. The power of each emperor, in 
theory, reached over the whole Empire, and the edicts of 
each were published under their joint names. 




Hall of the Baths of Diocletian — now the Church of St. Mary of 

the Angels. 

2. The next step in the reform was for each of the joint 
emperors to name his heir, under the title of Caesar, and to 
associate him in the work of governing. The Augusti (emperors) 
kept their own capitals in the central and well-ordered parts 
of the Empire — Diocletian at Nicomedia in Asia Minor, and 
Maximian at Milan in Italy. To the Caesars they assigned the 
more turbulent and exposed parts, the extreme East and the 
extreme West. 



Division 
of labor 



414 ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 

3. Thus the Empire was marked off into fovr great sections, 
called prefectures, each under the immediate supervision of 
one of the four chief rulers. The third step in the reform was 
to carry much further the division of duties. Below each Augus- 
tus and each Caesar there was now established a series of offi- 
cials in regular grades, as in an army. In particular, the forty 
large provinces gave way to about one hundred and twenty 
smaller ones. These were placed in thirteen groups (dioceses), 
each under its own officer, i The provincial governor reported 
to the officer of his diocese (the vicar) ; the vicar to the prefect 
of the prefecture ; and the prefect to the Caesar or Augustus. 
Each officer in the series sifted all business that came up to him 
from those below him, and passed on to his superior only the 
more important matters. This arrangement distributed duties 
in a workable way, and fixed responsibility precisely. At the 
same time, the emperor's control was made more effective, 
since all lines converged from below to him. 

4. The provincial governor now was too little important to 
rebel against an emperor ; and this security was further strength- 
ened by one more measure : the governors and vicars now became 
merely civil officials. Military command in every province was 
given to some other officer, who was responsible directly to the 
emperor. Thus, as in the ancient Persian empire, the civil and 
military authorities checked and watched one another. 

Thus the early, loosely organized despotism had become a 
vast centralized despotism. Each of Hadrian's old "ministers" 
or secretaries (p. 368) now became the head of an extensive 
department, with scores or hundreds of officials in many ranks ; 
and along with this change at the capital, went a multiplication 



1 The following table and map show the divisions. 

Prefectures Dioceses Provinces 

[ I East (15) ; Egypt (6) ; Asia (11) ; Pon- 

The East I -^^®^' | tus (11) ; Thrace (6) 49 

I Illyricum, Macedonia and Greece (6) ; Dacia (5) ... 11 
The West 1 ^^^^^^ 1*^^^ ^^^^ ' ^^^^^ ^6) ; Illyria (7) 30 



[ Gaul, Spain (7) ; The Gauls (17) ; Britain (5) 



29 



DIOCLETIAN 



415 



of officials throughout the provinces (Davis' Readings, II, No. 
117). Moreover, despotism was now avowed. Diocletian 
cast away the Republican cloak of Augustus and adopted even 
the forms of Oriental monarchy, to secure more reverence for 
the person of the emperor. He wore a diadem of gems, and 
robes of silk and gold, and fenced himself from even his highest 
officials by armies of functionaries and elaborate ceremonial. 
Subjects, if allowed to approach him at all, had to prostrate 
themselves slavishly at his feet. 

And this change was in more than form. The Senate became 
merely a city council for Rome : its consent was no longer asked 
in law-making. The emperor hereafter made laws merely by 
publishing an edict to the world or by sending a rescri-pt (a set 
of directions) to provincial governors. The only other source 
of new laws lay in the interpretation of old law, in doubtful 
cases, by the great judges whom the emperor appointed. 



Law- 
making 
by edict 



Absolutism refers to the source of supreme power: i.e. 
in a system of absolutism, supreme power is in the hands of 
one person. " Centralization " refers to the kind of adminis- 
tration. A centralized administration is one carried on by a 
body of officials of many grades, all appointed from above. 
Absolutism and centralization do not necessarily go together. 
Ps. government may come from the people, and yet rule 
through a centralized administration, as in France to-day. 
It may be absolute, and yet allow much freedom to local 
agencies, as in Turkey or in Russia in recent times. 

Under a great genius, like Napoleon the First, a cen- 
tralized government may for a time produce rapid benefits. 
But the system always decays, and it does nothing to educate 
the people politically. Local self-government is often pro- 
vokingly slow and faulty, but it is surer in the long run. 



II. CONSTANTINE: THE CHURCH VICTORIOUS 

In 303, after long hesitation, Diocletian began the most 
terrible of all the persecutions of the. Christians. Two years 



416 ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 

later, while this persecution was at its height, he laid down his 
power, to retire to private life,i p^suading his colleague Maxi- 
mian to do the same. The two Caesars became emperors, — 
Galerius in the East and Constantius in the West. Each ap- 
pointed a Caesar as an assistant and successor. But Constan- 
tius died in a few months, before the position of the new Caesars 
was firmly established, and this misfortune plunged the Empire 
into new strife. For eight years, civil war raged between six 
claimants for the throne. 

In such a struggle it was desirable not to be opposed by the 
growing power of the Christians. Galerius had been bitterly 
hostile to them, and had been mainly responsible for the perse- 
cution by Diocletian. But in the stress of civil war, shortly 
before his death, he published in 311 a grudging Edict of Tolera- 
tion. The document deplored the fact that the Christians 
would not "come back to reason," but declared that under 
the demoralizing conditions, the emperor, "with accustomed 
clemency," judged it wise "to extend pardon even to these 
men," and to permit them to resume their own worship "pro- 
vided they did nothing contrary to good order." 

The next year the cruel civil war came to a close with the 
victory of Constantine, under whom Christianity was to be 
more than merely tolerated. 

Constantine was the son of Constantius. Constantius had 
distinctly favored the Christians in his provinces. At his 
death, his devoted army at once clothed his son with the 
purple robes, hailing him Imperator. For some years Con- 
stantine was content to reorganize Britain and Gaul, preparing, 
at the proper moment, to interfere in Italy, where one claimant 
was destroying another in swift succession. In 312, he marched 
upon the worthless ruler who then held Rome. The Western 
army forced the passes of the Alps, and met the forces of the 



1 When pressed to assume the government again during the disorders 
that followed, Diocletian wrote from his rural retreat: "Could you come 
here and see the vegetables that I raise in my garden with ray own hands, 
you would no more talk to me of empire." 



CONSTANTINE 



417 



master of Rome for the decisive struggle at the Milvian Bridge, 
near the capital. 

Later writers told a famous story, which critics much ques- 
tion. On the eve of battle, runs the tale (Davis' Readings, II, 
No. 113), Constantine, after prayer for divine help, fell asleep. 
In his dream, Christ appeared to him, instructing him to inscribe 
the Cross upon his standards, — declaring, " In this symbol 
you shall conquer" ("Hoc signo vinces"). At all events, 




The Milvian Bridge To-day. — The foundations belong to the bridge of 
Constantine' s day. 



Constantine did adopt this symbol, and his army was completely 
victorious. Constantine now established himself as Emperor 
in the West. The next year, Licinius, his ally in the civil war, 
became Emperor in the East. 

Constantine ruled from 312 to 337. He preserved the reforms 
of Diocletian and perfected them, standing to Diocletian somewhat 
as- the first Augustus stood to Julius Caesar. He was far- 
sighted and unscrupulous. He did not hesitate to assassinate 
a rival, and his memory is stained by the cruel execution of his 



Perfects 
the reforms 
of 
Diocletian 



418 ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 



wife and his son. But his work, with that of Diocletian, enabled 
the Empire to withstand unbroken the storms of another hundred 
and fifty years, and preserved a great part of it for ten centuries 
more. 

Constantine definitely removed the capital of the Empire 
from Rome, and established it at Byzantium. This city he 
rebuilt with great magnificence, and from him it took its new 
name, — Constantinople, " Constantine's city." For this re- 
moval there were several wise reasons. (1) The turbulent 
Roman populace still clung to the name of the old Republic, 
and an Eastern city would afford a more peaceful home for the 
new Oriental monarchy. (2) Lying between the Danube 
and the Euphrates, Constantinople was a more convenient 
center than Rome from which to look to the protection of 
the frontiers. (3) Constantinople was admirably situated to 
become a great center of commerce. (4) It is often said also 
that Constantine wished a capital which he could make Christian 
more easily than was possible with Rome, attached as the Roman 
people were to the old gods connected with the glories of the city. 

This last consideration introduces us to the most important 
part of Constantine's work. 

The Christians still were less than one tenth the population 
of the Empire ; but they were energetic and enthusiastic ; they 
were massed in the great cities which held the keys to political 
power ; and they were admirably organized for united action. 

It is not likely that Constantine gave much thought to the 
truth of Christian doctrine, and we know that he did not prac- 
tise Christian virtues. But he was wise enough to recognize 
the good policy of allying this rising power to himself against 
his rivals. He may have seen, also, in a broader and unselfish 
way, the folly of trying to restore the old pagan world, and have 
felt the need of establishing harmony between the government 
and this new power within the Empire, so as to utilize its strength 
instead of always combating it. So, in 313, a few months 
after Milvian Bridge, from his capital at Milan, Constantine 
issued the famous decree known as the Edict of Milan: "We 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH VICTORIOUS 419 

grant to the Christians and to all others free choice to follow 

the mode of worship they may wish, in order that whatsoever 

divinity and celestial power may exist may be propitious to us 

and to all who live under our government." 

This edict established religioiis toleration in a less grudging Licinius 

way than the Edict of Galerius, and put an end forever to ft*®°ipts 
. • • A 1 • /~i ° restore 

pagan persecution of the Christians. At a later time Con- paganism 

stantine showed many favors to the church, granting money for 

its buildings, and exempting the clergy from taxation, as was 

done with teachers in the schools (p. 382). But it is not correct 

to say that he made Christianity the state religion : at the most 

he seems to have given it an especially favored place among 

the religions of the Empire. Constantine himself, as Pontifex 

Maximus, continued to make public sacrifices to the pagan gods. 

After ten years came a struggle between Constantine and 

Licinius for sole power. This was also the final conflict between 

Christianity and paganism. The followers of the old faiths 

rallied around Licinius, and before the decisive battle that 

general is said to have addressed his soldiers with these words : 

" These are our country's gods, and these we honor with a worship 
derived from our remote ancestors. But he who leads the army op- 
posed to us has proven false to the religion of his fathers . . . honoring, 
in his infatuation, some strange and unheard-of deity, with whose 
despicable standard he now disgraces the army, and confiding in whose 
aid he has taken up arms . . . not so much against us as against the 
gods he has forsaken. However, the present occasion shall decide . . . 
between our gods and those our adversaries profess to honor." 

Whether or not Licinius used such words, many of his followers 
were influenced by these feelings ; and the victory of Constantine 
was accepted as a verdict in favor of Christianity. 

Constantine ruled fourteen years more as sole emperor ; and 
for a quarter of a century after him, his three sons ruled with 
Oriental inefficiency, cruelty, and treachery, and with frequent 
murders of relatives whom they feared. Finally the Alemanni 
(p. 400) broke into Gaul and seemed about to become masters 
of that province. This peril summoned Julian, a nephew of 



420 ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 




A Gold Coin of Theodosius. — ^Theodo- 
sius ruled from Constantinople and his 
coins show the features of a new "Byzan- 
tine " art found in the East after his time. 



Constantine, from his studies at Athens, to the command of 
the imperial armies. The youthful philosopher defeated the 
invaders in a great battle at Strassburg, and the enthusiastic 
army, against his will, saluted him emperor. 

Julian made a strong ruler ; but he spent his energy in con- 
flict with two forces, both of which were to prove victorious, — • 
the barbarians and the church. This reign saw the last official 
attempt to restore paganism. Julian had been brought up in the 

Christian faith (so that 
he is sometimes called 
"Julian the Apostate"); 
but his studies had in- 
spired in him a love for 
the pagan Greek philoso- 
phy, and he was filled 
with disgust at the crimes 
and vices of his cousins' 
"Christian" court. He 
reestablished the worship of the old gods as the religion of the 
state, rebuilt the ruined temples, and restored the pagan em- 
blems to the standards of the armies. He wrote also, with con- 
siderable ability, against Christian doctrines. He did not try, 
however, to use violence against the church ; and after two years 
(361-363) he fell in a victorious battle in a brilliant campaign 
against the Persians. According to legend, when he felt the 
Persian arrow which gave him a mortal wound, he cried out 
(addressing Christ), "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!" He 
lived two days in much pain, and spent the hours in talking 
with his friends about the immortality of the soul. 

Julian's successor restored Christianity as the leading religion, 
and the system of partnership emperors. Then, in 379, the 
power in the East fell to Theodosius the Great, and this ruler 
finally became master in the West also. 

Theodosius made Christianity the only State religion. He 
prohibited pagan worship, on pain of death, and closed the ancient 
festival to Zeus at Olympia. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH VICTORIOUS 421 

This makes more striking a remarkable penance to which a 
bishop of the church subjected him. A number of his Gothic 
officers were massacred by the citizens of Thessalonica. In 
rage Theodosius gave orders for a terrible punishment. By his 
command the army in the guilty city surrounded the theater 
where the great body of inhabitants were assembled for the 
games, and killed men, women, and children without mercy. 
At the time, Theodosius was at the Western capital, Milan. 
When next he attended church, the bishop Ambrose sternly 
forbade him to enter, stained as he was with innocent blood. 
The emperor obeyed the priest. He withdrew humbly and 
accepted the penance which Ambrose imposed, and then, some 
months later, was received again to the services (Davis' Readings, 
II, No. 116). 

From 392 to 395 a.d., Theodosius was sole emperor. This 
was the last real union of the whole Empire. On the death of 
Theodosius, the Empire was divided between his sons, Arcadius 
and Honorius. After this the Empire in the East and the Empire 
in the West became separate and sometimes hostile powers, 
and the West soon fell to the barbarians. Before entering upon 
that new age, we will survey some phases of the fourth century 
more closely. 



CHAPTER XLII 



THE EMPIRE OF THE FOURTH CENTURY 



I. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



The early Christian missionaries to a province naturally 
went first to the chief city there. Thus the capital of the 
province became the seat of the first church in the district. 
From this mother society, churches spread to the other cities 
of the province, and from each city there sprouted outlying 
parishes. At the head of each parish was a priest, assisted by 
deacons to care for the poor. The head of a city church was a 
bishop (overseer), with supervision over the rural churches of 
the neighborhood. The bishop of the mother church in the 
capital city exercised great authority over the other bishops 
of the province. He became known as archbishop or metro- 
politan; and it became customary for him to summon the 
other bishops to a central council. 

Commonly, one of these metropolitans in a civil diocese 
(p. 414) came to have leadership over the others. This lot 
fell usually to the metropolitan of the chief city of the diocese. 
Over much of the Empire, the diocese became an ecclesiastical 
unit, and its chief metropolitan was known as a patriarch. 

By degrees, the patriarchs of a few great cities were exalted 
above the others. Finally all the East became divided between' 
the four patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and 
Constantinople ; while all the West, where there was only one 
great city, came under the authority of the bishop of Rome. 
This unity of organization helped to develop the idea of a single 
"Catholic" {all-embracing) church, which should rule the whole 
worlds 



1 See Robinson's Readings, I, 19-21, for a third century statement, 
the Roman Catholic view, see ch. li. 

422 



For 



THE CHURCH AND HERESY 423 

After Theodosius, the church used violence to stamp out Persecution 
other religions. In out-of-the-way corners of the Empire, °* pagans 
paganism ^ lived on for a century more ; but in the more settled dissenters 
districts the worshipers of Christ destroyed the old temples, 
broke up the old philosophical schools, and sometimes put to 
death the worshipers of the old gods. Almost at once, too, 
the Christians began to use force to prevent differences of 
opinion among themselves. When the leaders tried to state 
just what they believed about difficult points, some violent 
disputes arose. In such cases the views of the majority finally 
prevailed as the orthodox doctrine, and the views of the minority 
became heresy — to be crushed out in blood, if need were. 

Most of the early- heresies arose from different opinions about 
the exact nature of Christ. Thus Arius, a priest of Alexandria, 
taught that, while Christ was the divine Son of God, He was 
not equal to the Father. Athanasius, of the same city, asserted 
that Christ was not only divine and the Son of God, but that 
He and the Father were absolutely equal in all respects, — " of 
the same substance" and "co-eternal." 

The struggle waxed fierce and divided Christendom into 
opposing camps. But the Emperor Constantine desired union 
in the church. If it split into hostile fragments, his political 
reasons for favoring it would be gone. Accordingly, in 325, The Nicene 
he summoned all the principal clergy of the Empire to the first ^^^^^ 
great coimcil of the whole church, at Nicaea, in Asia Minor, 
and ordered them to come to agreement. Arius and Athanasius 
in person led the fierce debate. In the end the majority sided 
with Athanasius. His doctrine, summed up in the Nicene Creed, 
became the orthodox creed of Christendom ; and Arius and his 
followers were persecuted. 

The victory of Christianity profoundly influenced the old 

pagan world. It mitigated slavery; it built up a vast and 

beneficent system of charity ; and it abolished the gladiatorial 

1 Pagan is from a Latin word meaning a rustic. In like manner, at a 
later time, the Christian Germans called the remaining adherents of the old 
German worship heathens, or "heath-dwellers." 



424 



ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 



games, and the exposing of infants to die. The greatest pagans 
had looked upon suicide as perfectly excusable, and that evil 
had been growing fearfully common : Christianity made it 
one of the worst of crimes. The deeper purifying results of the 
new faith, in the hearts of individual men and women, history 
cannot trace directly. 

But no event of this kind can work in one direction only. 
Paganism reacted upon Christianity. The victory was in 
part a compromise. The pagan Empire became Christian ; 
but the Christian church became, to some degree, imperial and 
pagan. The gain enormously exceeded the loss ; but there did 
take place an inevitable change from the earlier Christianity. 

The literature of the fourth century consisted almost wholly 
of dreary controversy in Christian theology. The following 
names, however, call for remembrance : 

Augustine (Saint), bishop of Hippo in Africa, author of The 
City of God. 

John Chrysostom, ("John of the Golden Mouth"), a famous 
orator of the church, who, with Augustine, vigorously pro- 
tested against the policy of persecution by the church. 

Jerome (Saint), a hermit in Syria, who translated the Bible 
into Latin — the Vulgate version. 

Ulfilas, a Gothic hostage, who, on his return to his people, 
converted them to the Arian form of Christianity. He made an 
alphabet for the Gothic language and translated the Bible into 
Gothic. This is the oldest Bible in any Teutonic language. A 
copy in silver letters upon scarlet parchment is preserved in 
the lilirary of Upsala University. 

The fourth century, even more than the third, was a time 
of intellectual decay. There were no poets and no new science. 
Even the old literature and science were neglected and largely 
forgotten. Many Christians were hostile to pagan science 
and literature. Pagan poetry, beautiful as it was, was filled 
with "immoral stories of the old gods. The Christians feared 
contamination from it, as the Puritans of the seventeenth 
century did from the plays of Shakespeare. 



INTELLECTUAL DECAY 425 

The contempt for pagan science had less excuse, and was 
particularly unfortunate. For instance, the spherical form of 
the earth was well known to the Greeks (p. 234) ; but the early 
Christians demolished the idea by theological arguments. "It 
is impossible," said even St. Augustine, "there should be in- 
habitants on the other side of the earth, since no such race is 
recorded in Scripture among the descendants of Adam." And, 
said others, "if the earth were round, how could all men see 
Christ at his coming?" The prevalent feeling was forcefully 
expressed in a writing known as the "Apostolical Constitutions" 
(350 A.D.) : 

" Refrain from all the writings of the heathens ; . . . For if thou 
wilt explore history, thou hast the Books of the Kings ; or seekest thou 
for words of wisdom and eloquence, thou hast the Prophets, Job, and 
the Book of Proverbs ... Or dost thou long for tuneful strains, thou 
hast the Psalms ; or to explore the origin of things, thou hast the Book 
of Genesis. . . . Wherefore abstain scrupulously from all strange 
and devilish books." 

In 398, a council of the church cautioned bishops against 
reading any books except religious ones ; and persecution by 
the church had already broken up the old philosophical schools. 
The church was soon to become the mother and sole protector 
of a new learning ; but it bears part of the blame for the loss 
of the old.i 

II. SOCIETY AND DAILY LIFE 

The century that followed the reforms of Diocletian was Fall of 
marked by a fair degree of outward prosperity. But early *^® Empire : 
in the coming century (the fifth) the Empire was to crumble and false 
under barbarian attacks. These inroads were less formidable 
than many which had been rebuffed in earlier centuries (p. 442). 
The barbarians, then, are not to be considered as the chief 
cause of the "Fall." The causes were internal. The Roman 
Empire was overthrown from without by an ordinary attack, 
because it had grown iveak within. 

1 Drane's Christian Schools and Scholars, 1-47, gives an interesting 
account of early Christian culture somewhat different from the above. 



426 



ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 



This weakness was not due to decline in the army. The 
army kept its superb organization, and to the last was so strong 
in its discipline and its pride that it was ready to face any odds 
unflinchingly. But more and more it became impossible to 
find men to fill the legions, or money to pay them. Dearth of 
men (p. 401) and of money was the cause of the fall of the state. 
The Empire was exhausted. It had become a shell. 

Lack of money was one of the great evils. The Empire did 
not have sufficient supplies of precious metals for the demands of 
business ; and what money there was, was steadily drained away 




Roman Coins of the Empire, such as are found widely scattered in 

the Far East. 

to India and the distant Orient (p. 377). By the fourth cen- 
tury, this movement had carried away hundreds of millions 
of dollars in coined money. Even the imperial officers had to 
take part of their salaries in produce — robes, horses, grain. 
Trade began to go back to primitive barter; and it became 
harder and harder to collect taxes. 

The Empire demanded more and more taxes. It had to 
have taxes in order to fight barbarians. But the time came 
when the citizens dreaded the tax collector more than they 
feared the barbarians. They had less money wherewith to 
pay ; and the complex machinery of government cost more 
and more. Says one historian, — " The earth swarmed with 
the consuming hierarchy of extortion, so that men said that 
they who received taxes were more than they who paid them." 



LACK OF MEN AND MONEY 427 

The classes of society were becoming fixed. At the top was The 
the emperor. At the bottom were the peasantry and artisans n^P^^or 
to produce food and wealth wherewith to pay taxes. Between 
were two aristocracies, — a small imperial nobility for the 
Empire at large, and a local aristocracy in each city. 

The imperial nobility had swallowed up the old senatorial The great 
class of Rome, and most of the knights. It was "a nobility of ^° ®^ 
office." That is, a family lost its rank unless from time to time 
it furnished officials to the government. 

A noble of this class was a citizen of the whole Empire, not of 
one municipality alone, and he did not have to pay local taxes. 
True, he might be called upon at any moment for ruinous ex- 
penses at the capital, in fulfilling some imperial command, or 
he might be required to assume some costly office at his own 
expense on a distant frontier. But only a few individuals were 
actually ruined by such duties. The great majority, through 
their influence with the government and by bribery, escaped 
most of the burden of taxation — which they were better able 
to meet than any other class. 

The great landowners were nearly all in this class; and 
their splendid villas (p. 312) dotted the Empire. For most 
purposes a villa was self-sufl[icient. It raised its own food, and 
prepared it for the table, and carried on the other industries 
necessary for the life of its inhabitants. 

The local nobility (or curials) were the senate class in their Smaller 
respective cities. They too had some special privileges. They ^ot>les 
could not be drafted into the army, as the classes below them 
might be, or subjected to bodily punishment. But those who 
rose to high magistracies in the city had to bear cruel expenses 
in providing shows and festivals, and all curials had costly duties 
in supplying the city poor with grain. Worst of all, they were 
held responsible for the collection of the imperial taxes in their 
district. 

This burden finally became so crushing that many curials 
tried desperately to evade it — even by sinking into a lower 
class or by flight to the barbarians. Then, to make safe the 



428 ROMAN EMPIRE IN FOURTH CENTURY 

revenue, the emperors made them an hereditary class. They 
were forbidden to become clergy, soldiers, or lawyers ; they 
were not allowed to remove from one city to another ; and 
they could not even travel without permission. A place in 
the senate of his city had once been the highest ambition of a 
wealthy middle class citizen ; but in the fourth century it had 
become almost an act of heroism to assume the duty. A story 
is told that in a Spanish municipality a public-spirited man 
voluntarily offered himself for a vacancy in the curia, and that 
his fellow-citizens erected a statue in his honor. 
The middle Between these curials and the artisan class, there had been 
class decays ^^ every city of the Early Empire a large middle class of small 
landholders, merchants, bankers, lawyers, and physicians. 
This class was rapidly disappearing. Some were compelled by 
law to become curials ; more, in the financial ruin of the times, 
sank into the working class. 

The artisans were grouped in gilds. All the bakers in a city 
belonged to the bakers' gild of that place ; all the masons, to a 
masons' gild (p. 374). A gild regulated methods of work, and had 
much control over its members. Each artisan was now bound 
to his gild by law, as the curial was bound to his office. The con- 
dition of artisans had become desperate. An edict of Diocle- 
tian's regarding prices and wages shows that a workman re- 
ceived not more than one tenth the wages of an American 
workman of like grade, while food and clothing cost at least 
one third as much as now. His family rarely knew the taste of 
butter, eggs, or fresh meat. 

The peasantry had become serfs. That is, they were bound 
to their labor on the soil, and changed masters with the land 
they tilled. 

In the last days of the Republic, the system of great es- 
tates, which had blighted Italy earlier (pp. 315-317), began to 
curse province after province outside Italy. Free labor dis- 
appeared before servile labor ; grain culture declined ; and large . 
areas of land ceased to be tilled. To help remedy this state of 
affairs, the emperors introduced a new system. After success- 



CASTE SYSTEM AND SERFDOM 



429 




ful wars, they gave large numbers of barbarian captives to 
great landlords, — thousands in a batch, — not as slaves, but 
as coloni, or serfs. The purpose was to secure an hereditary 
class of agricultural laborers, and so keep up the food supply. 
The coloni were reallj' given not to the landlord, but to the land. 
They were not personal property, as slaves were. They 
were part of the real estate. They, and their children after 
them, were attached to the soil, and could not be sold off it. 
They had some rights which slaves did not have. They could 
contract a legal marriage, and each 
had his own plot of ground, of 
which he could not be dispossessed 
so long as he paid to the landlord 
a fixed rent in labor and in produce. 

This growth of serfdom made it 
still more difficult for the free small- 
farmer to maintain himself. That 
class sank into serfs. On the 
other hand, many slaves rose into 
serfs, until nearly all men who tilled the soil were of this class. 

Thus society was crystallizing into castes. The peasant was 
bound to the land, the artisan to his hereditary gild, the curial 
and the noble each to his hereditary place. Freedom of move- 
ment was lost. In industry and society, as well as in govern- 
ment, the Empire was becoming Oriental. 

We noted the pernicious alliance between the money power 
and the government in the closing years of the Republic. A 
like state of affairs continued under the Empire. Diocletian 
sought to break off this alliance. He charged that the ruinous 
rise in the cost of living in his day was due to combinations of 
capitalists to raise prices. He accused those combinations of 
"raging avarice" and "unbridled desire for plunder"; and, to 
check the evil, he fixed by edict the highest price it should 
be lawful to ask for each of some eight hundred articles of daily 
use, — wheat, leather, various sorts of cloth, buttej, eggs, pork, 
beef. Such an effort in that day was doomed to failure. But 



Serfdom 



Agricultural Serfs in 
Roman Gaul. — From 
Lacroix. 



Diocletian 
denounces 
the money 
power ; 
seeks to 
check high 
cost of 
living 



430 



DECAY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 



it is interesting as almost the only case, after Caesar's day, in 
which the government tried to interfere on the side of the poor. 

No serious attempt was made, after the early days of the 
Empire, to build up a new free peasantry by giving farms to 
the unemployed millions of the cities, as Gracchus and Caesar 
had tried to do. This is probably due to the influence of wealth 
upon the ruling powers. The noble landlords who shared among 

themselves the wide do- 
mains of Africa, Gaul, and 
Spain received gladly the 
free gift of thousands of 
coloni (p. 429) to till their 
lands; but they would 
have fought fiercely any at- 
tempt by the government 
to recover part of their 
domains to make homes 
for free settlers. 

But there is another side 
to the question. In the 
days of Gracchus and of 
Caesar, the city mob was 
made up, in good part, of 
ex-farmers, or of their sons, 
who had been driven from 
the land against their will. 
But long before Diocletian's day, the rabble of Rome or 
Alexandria had lost all touch with country life. Sure of free 
doles of grain, sleeping in gateways, perhaps, but spending their 
days in the splendid free public baths or in the terrible fasci- 
nation of gladiatorial games or of the chariot races, they could 
no longer be drawn to the simple life and hard labor of the farm 
— even if farming had continued profitable. We know that to- 
day, in America, hundreds of thousands of stalwart men prefer 
want and misery on the crowded sidewalks and under the white 
blaze of city lights, with a chance to squander a rare nickel on 




Serfs in Roman Gaul Making Bread. 
— From Lacroix. Cf . p. 427 on the villa. 



THE MONEY POWER 431 

"the movies," to the monotony and loneliness of a comfortable 
living in the country. So in the ancient world, it was probably 
too late, when the Empire came, to wean the mob from its 
city life. 

The only measure that helped fill up the gaps in population Peaceful 
was the admission of barbarians. Not only was the Roman a^^^sion 
army now mostly made up of Germans : whole provinces were barians 
settled by them, before their kinsmen from without, in the fifth 
century, began in earnest to break over the Rhine. Conquered 
barbarians had been settled, hundreds of thousands at a time, 
in frontier provinces, and friendly tribes had been admitted, 
to make their homes in depopulated districts. As slaves, 
soldiers, coloni, subjects, the German world had been filtering 
into the Roman world, until a large part of the Empire was 
peacefully Germanized. 

These Germans within the Empire, in large measure, took on 
Roman civilization and customs ; but at the same time, they 
kept some of their old customs and ideas and a friendly feeling 
for their kinsmen in the German forests. The infusion of new 
blood helped to renew the decaying population and to check 
the decline of material prosperity ; but the barrier between the 
Empire and its assailants melted away. 

For Further Reading. — Specially suggested : Davis' Readings, 
II, Nos. 109-119. Additional: Felham's Outlines, 577-586; Rob- 
inson's Readings, I, 20-29 ; Adams' Civilization during the Middle Ages, 
48-64 ; Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (a story). 

Review Exercise 

1. Add the dates 284, 325, 378, to the list. 

2. Extend list of terms and names for fact drill. 

3. Memorize characterization of the centuries of the Empire ; i.e. — 
First and second centuries : good government, peace and pros- 
perity. 

Third century : decline, — material, political, and intellectual. 
Fourth century : revival of imperial power ; victory of Chris- 
tianity ; social and intellectual decline. 
Fifth and sixth centuries (in advance) : barbarian conquest. 



PART VI 

EOMANO-TEUTOHIO EUROPE 

The settlement of the Teutonic tribes was not merely the introduction 
of a new set of ideas and institutions, . . . it was also the introduction 
of fresh blood and youthful mind — the muscle and brain which in the 
future were to do the larger share of the world's work. 

— George Burton Adams. 



CHAPTER XLIII 



MERGING OF ROMAN AND TEUTON 

Beyond the Rhine and the Danube, stretching away toward 
the Baltic and the Vistula, there had long roamed many " forest 
peoples," whom the Romans called Germans, or Teutons. 
,These barbarians were tall, huge of limb, white-skinned, flaxen- 
haired, with fierce, blue eyes ; and to the short, dark-skinned 
races of Roman Europe they seemed tawny giants. The dis- 
tant tribes were savage and unorganized. Those near the Em- 
pire had taken on some civilization ; but in general they were 
little above the level of the better North American Indians in 
our colonial period. 

The usual marks of savagery were found among them. They 
lived mainly by hunting and fishing, and what little agriculture 
they had was carried on by women and slaves. They were 
fierce, quarrelsome, hospitable. Their cold, damp forests 
helped to make them drunkards and gluttonous eaters. They 
were desperate gamblers, too, staking even their liberty upon 
a throw of the dice. At the same time, they reverenced truth 
and fidelity to the pledged word. Their grim joy in battle rose 
sometimes to fierce delight or even to a "Baersark" rage that 
made a warrior cast away armor and fight " bare," in his shirt, 

432 



RELIGION OF THE TEUTONS 



433 



insensible to wounds. In particular, they possessed a proud 
spirit of individual liberty, " a high, stern sense of manhood and 
the worth of man" — a spirit that had been lost in the Roman 
world. In the Song of Beowulf (an old poem that has come 
down to us from the pagan forests) the chieftain goes out to 
an almost hopeless encounter with a terrible monster that 
had been destroying his people. "Each man," exclaims the 
hero, "must abide the end of his life work; let him that may 
work, work his doomed deeds ere night come." And, again, 
as he sits by the dragon mound, victorious, but dying : 

"These fifty winters have I ruled this folk; no folk-king of folk- 
kings about me — not any one of them — dare in the war-strife wel- 
come my onset ! Time's change and chances I have abided ; held 
my own fairly ; sought not to snare men ; oath never sware I falsely 
against right. So, for all this, may I glad be at heart now, sick though 
I sit here, wounded with death-wounds ! " 

The old Teutonic religion was a rude polytheism. Woden, 
the war god, held the first place in their worship. From him 
the noble families all claimed descent. Thor, or Donner, whose 
hurling hammer caused the thunder, was the god of storms 
and of the air. Freya was the deity of joy and fruitfulness. 
These gods live still in our names for the days of the week, — 
Woden's day, Thor's day, and Freya's day.^ Heroes who had 
fought a good fight on earth were to find reward hereafter in 
fighting beside these gods of Light and Warmth against the 
giants of Cold and Darkness ; but in the end, at the Twilight 
of the Gods, they were to perish before the powers of evil. Says 
John Richard Green (History of the English People), "life was 
built for them not on the hope of an hereafter, but on the proud 
self-consciousness of noble souls." 

Their government has been described for us by Tacitus 
(p. 385). A tribe lived in palisaded villages scattered in the 
forest. The village was originally no doubt the home of a clan. 
Village and tribe each had its popular Assembly and its chief. 

1 Tuesday and Saturday take their names from two obscure gods, Tiw and 
Saetere ; and the remaining two days are the Moon's day and the Sun's day. 



Religion 
and gods 



Govern- 
ment 



434 



THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 



The tribal chief, or king, was surrounded by his council of 
village chiefs. To quote Tacitus : 

"On affairs of smaller moment, the chiefs consult; on 
those of greater importance, the whole community. ... 
They assemble on stated days, either at the new or full 
moon. When they all think fit, they sit down armed. . . . 
Then the king, or chief, and such others as are conspicuous 
for age, birth, military renown, or eloquence, are heard ; 
and gain attention rather from their ability to persuade, than 
their authority to command. If a proposal displease, the 
assembly reject it by an inarticulate murmur ; if it prove 
agreeable they clash their javelins ; for the most honorable 
expression of assent among them is the sound of arms."^ 

Every great chief was surrounded by a band of " companions," 
who lived in his household, ate at his table, and fought at his 
side. To them the chief gave food, weapons, and plunder. 
For the safety of their "lord" they were ready to give their 
lives. To survive his death in battle, leaving his body to the 
foe, was lifelong disgrace. This personal loyalty corresponded 
to the Roman loyalty to the state. 

The Teutons came into our story first in the days of Marius. 
For the five hundred years since, they had been beating about 
the barriers of the civilized world. Now and then they had 
broken through, but always hitherto even these terrible warriors 
had been driven out again by the disciplined Roman legions 
led by some Caesar, Aurelius, Diocletian, or Julian. With the 
falling away of Roman population, we have seen, many Teutonic 
tribes had been admitted peaceably, toward the close of the 
period, to settle within the Empire, and now a measure of this 
sort, on a larger scale than ever before, proved the first step in 
the Teutonic conquest. 

In 376 A.D., the whole people of the West Goths (Visigoths) 
appeared on the Danube, with their flocks and herds, and with 

1 Compare with the early Greek organization, pp. 95-97, and read Davis' 
Readings, II, No. 121, from Tacitus. 



GOTHS SACK ROME 435 

their women and children in long lines of wooden carts, fleeing 
from the terrible Huns — wild nomadic horsemen from Tartary. 
The Goths begged to cross the river into the protection of the 
Empire ; and Valens, one of the shadow-emperors of that period, 
gave them lands south of the Danube. They were to surrender Battle of 
their arms, while Roman agents were to supply them food g a"^^ ^' 
until the harvest. But these agents embezzled the funds, 
furnishing only vile and insufficient food, while, for bribes, 
they allowed the barbarians to keep their arms — in much the 
same way that corrupt American "Indian agents" have pro- 
voked many Indian wars. The Goths marched on Constan- 
tinople, defeated and slew Valens at Adrianople, and then 
ravaged at will in the Balkan lands. 

During the reign of Theodosius the Great, these invaders Alaric 
seemed to have become quiet settlers in certain provinces he ^'^"^^'^^ 
assigned them; but on his death, masses of the Goths rose 
again under an ambitious young chieftain, Alaric. Alaric led 
his host into Greece, spared Athens for a heavy ransom, 
but sacked Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. In 402, he invaded 
Italy, but was beaten back in two great battles by the gigan- And sacks 
tic Vandal, Stilicho, general of Honorius, Emperor of the Ro™^' 4io 
West (p. 421). Soon afterward, however, Honorius suspected 
Stilicho of plotting to seize the throne, and had him mur- 
dered. The deed was signal for Alaric to try Italy once 
more. The weak Honorius hid himself in his impregnable 
fortress of Ravenna, defended by its marshes, and left the 
Goths free to work their will. Alaric captured Rome. Then, 
to the unspeakable consternation of the world, for five days 
and nights "the Eternal City," as men had called it, was 
given up to sack — just 800 years after its capture by the 
Gauls (Davis' Readings, II, Nos. 122, 123). 

In 414 a new king led the Goths into Spain. There they Spanish 
found the Vandals, who had entered by a shorter route across ^\^^°^ 
the Rhme. Driving these Vandals into Africa, the West Goths West Goths, 
set up in Spain the first firm Teutonic kingdom. Meantime 4i4 A.D. 
other Teutons were swarming across the Rhine. Finally, after 



436 



THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 



frightful destruction, the East Goths estabHshed themselves in 
Italy ; the Burgundians, in the valley of the Rhone ; the Angles 
and Saxons, in Britain; the Franks, in Northeastern Gaul. 
This "wandering of the peoples" filled the fifth century and part 
of the sixth. 

When the Vandals were finally driven from Spain, they 
crossed into North Africa, and, after ten years of fighting, set 
up a kingdom with its capital at Carthage. From that port, 
their pirate fleets ravaged the Mediterranean coasts cruelly — 
until "Vandalism" became a synonym for wanton destruc- 
tion. In 455 they sacked even Rome in a way that made 
Alaric's capture seem merciful. For fourteen days the bar- 
barians ravaged the venerable capital, loading their ships 
with the spoils which Rome had plundered from all the world. 
Ancient Carthage was avenged, and Scipio's foreboding (p. 300) 
had come true. 

While the Teutons were busy setting up kingdoms in the 
crumbling Empire, they and the Romans were threatened for 
a moment with common ruin. Somewhat before 400 a.d., 
there had appeared behind the Teutons a confused mass of more 
savage Huns, Tartars, Finns, and Avars, from the steppes of 
Asia. We call these peoples Turanians, and they seem to have 
resembled the ancient Scythians (p. 67). Out of them, about 
the middle of the fifth century, Attila, king of the Huns, had 
built up a vast military power, reaching from central Asia into 
central Europe. It was his boast that grass never grew again 
where his horse's hoof had trod. Now his terrible hordes 
rolled resistlessly into Gaul. 

Happily the peoples of the West realized their danger and 
laid aside all rivalries to meet it. Theodoric, hero-king of the 
Visigoths, brought up his host from Spain to fight under the 
Roman banner. Burgundian and Frank rallied from the 
corners of Gaul. And Aetius, "the Last of the Romans," 
marshaled all these allies and the last great Roman army of the 
West against the countless Hunnish swarms. The fate of the 
world hung trembling in the balance while the great " battle of 



East 15 from 20 Greenwich 26 



30 



35 



The 
GERMANIC KINGDOMS 

established on 

ROMAN SOIL 

Close of Fifth Century 

(Britain in Sixth Century^ 

SCALE OF MILES 





60 100 200 



400 500 




ae Uuri'ted, to ■» gTrioii ac<nt.ha<Ti ut.m'ji CSeptiijnaiTiia) 



THE HUNS AT CHALONS 



437 



the nations" was fought out at Chalons. United though they 
were, the forces of civiKzation seemed insignificant before the 
innumerable hosts of Asiatics. Theodoric fell gallantly, sword 
in hand. But at last the victory was won by the generalship 
of Aetius (Davis' Readings, II, Nos. 125, 126), and with spent 
force the invasion rolled away to the East. Says Bury {Later 
Roman Empire) : — 

"Aetius was the man who now stood in the breach, and sounded 
the Roman trumpet to call the nations to do battle for the hopes of 
humanity. The interests of the Teutons were more vitally concerned 
at this crisis than [even] the interests of the Empire. . . . Their 
nascent civilization would have been crushed . . . and they ivould not 
have been able to learn longer at the feet of Rome the arts of peace and 
culture/^ 

The same two terrible centuries of invasion brought on the 
European stage another new race also — the Slavs ; and the 
opening of the seventh century brought Mohammedanism 
(p. 452). Mohammedanism, we shall see, seized swiftly upon 
the old historic ground in Asia and Africa ; but those lands have 
had little touch since then with our civilization. South of the 
Danube, Slavic barbarians settled up almost to the walls of 
Constantinople : Southeastern Europe became Slavic-Greek, 
just as Western Europe had become Teutonic-Roman. But 
until very recently Southeastern Europe, too, has had little hearing, 
since then, upon our Western World. The two halves of Europe 
fell apart, along the old cleavage between Greek and Latin 
civilizations (p. 306) ; and in all the centuries since, human 
progress has come almost wholly from Western Europe — 
Teutonic-Roman Europe — and from its offshoots in new 
continents. 



Chalons, 
451 A.D. 



Early in the fifth century the Empire in the West became Italy in 
limited to Italy. There, in the capital at Ravenna amid im- ^^ -^u 
penetrable swamps, the emperors still kept their courts, but centuries 
real power was held by Teutonic generals, like Stilicho and 
Aetius. After the Vandal raid, such generals set up and deposed 



438 



THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS 



puppet emperors at will. One of them ventured finally to set 
upon the throne his own son under the name Romulus Augus- 
tulus. Then, in 476, another successful general, Odovaker, 
dethroned this boy, and ruled Italy himself, claiming to 
be the lieutenant of the Emperor Zeno at distant Constanti- 
nople. Thus, in name, Italy became a province of the 
Greek "Empire in the East"; and, after Jf76, there was no 
emperor in the West for more than three hundred years. 
Odovaker was soon overthrown by the invasion of the East 
Goths, under their king, Theodoric, who, however, kept up 
the fiction of ruling Italy as a representative of the Greek 
emperor. 

The Empire east of the Adriatic had always been essentially 
Greek in culture (p. 306). Separated now from the Latin West, 

it rapidly grew more Greek and 
Oriental. It still called itself 
Roman ; but after 500 a.d. we 
commonly speak of it as the Greek 
Empire or the Byzantine Empire. 
Early in the sixth century, after 
a long line of weak rulers, the 
Greek Empire fell for a time to Justinian the Great. This 
emperor reconquered the Slavs in the Balkans, renewed the 
old frontier of the Danube, saved Europe from a threatened 
Persian conquest from the opposite frontier, and then turned 
to restore the imperial power in the West. He recovered 
Africa from the Vandals, and the Mediterranean islands, 
with part of Spain, and after twenty years of devastating 
war he even regained Italy and the ancient world-capital. 

But on the death of Justinian the Lombards, a new Teutonic 
people, swarmed into Italy and soon occupied much of it. 
Their chief kingdom was in the Po valley, which we still call 
Lombardy ; but Lombard "dukedoms" were scattered also in 
other parts. The Empire kept (1) the Exarchate of Ravenna 
on the Adriatic, (2) Rome, with a little surrounding territory 
on the west coast, and (3) the extreme south. 




Silver Coin of Justinian. 



JUSTINIAN AND HIS CODE 



439 



Thus Italy, the middle land for which Roman and Teuton had 
struggled through two centuries, was at last divided bettveen them, 
and shattered into fragments. No other country sufFered so ter- 
ribly during the centuries of invasion as this lovely land which 
had so long been mistress of the world. 



Far more important than the brief and bloody conquests of The 
Justinian was his codification of the Roman law. In the course £^^J"^ ^ 




Church of St. Sophia, Constantinople, built by Justinian upon the site 
of an earlier church of the same name by Constantine. The whole 
interior is lined with costly, many-colored marbles. This view shows 
only a part of the vast dome, with eighteen of the forty windows which 
run about its circumference of some 340 feet. In 1453 the building 
became a Mohammedan mosque (ch. lix). 

of centuries that law had become an intolerable maze. Julius 
Caesar had planned to codify it, and since his time the need 
had grown vastly more pressing. Under Justinian a com- 
mission of able lawyers put the whole body of law into a new 
form, marvelously compact, clear, and orderly. 



440 THE JUSTINIAN CODE 

The brief reconquest of Italy had estabhshed this Justinian 
Code in that land. Thence, in later centuries, it spread over 
the West, to become the basis of all modern continental European 
codes, and (through France) the basis even of the law of our 
own Louisiana. "Roman law," says Woodrow Wilson {The 
State, 158), "has furnished Europe with many, if not most, of her 
principles of private right." 



CHAPTER XLIV 

THE STATE OF WESTERN EUROPE, 400-800 A.D. 

The invasions brought overwhelming destruction upon 
Western Europe — the most complete catastrophe that ever 
befell a great civilized society. True, civilization had already 
been declining; but the invasions accelerated the process tre- 
mendously, and long prevented any revival. 

And when the invader had entered into possession, and so 
ceased to destroy, two new causes of decline appeared : — 

1. The new ruling classes were grossly ignorant. Few, even 
of their nobles, could read, or write their names, and they let 
much of the old civilization decay because they did not under- tion 
stand its use. 

2. The language of everyday speech grew away from, the literary 
language in which the remains of the old knowledge were pre- 
served. The conquerors disregarded inflections when they used 
the speech of their subjects; they corrupted words by mispro- 
nouncing them ; and they added a mass of new Teutonic words. 
Many different dialects were springing up in the different parts 
of Gaul, Burgundy, Spain, Italy, and were finally to grow into 
French, Spanish, and Italian. (These languages — mingled of 
Teutonic and Roman elements — are called Romance languages.) 
But meantime the language of learning became " dead." It was 
known only to the clergy, and, even by them, very imperfectly. 

The fifth and sixth centuries brought the Teuton into the 
Roman world: the seventh and eighth fused Roman ^ and 
Teutonic elements into a new "Western Europe." For the 
whole four hundred years Europe remained a dreary scene of 
violence and ignorance. The old Roman schools disappeared, 

441 



442 



STATE OF EUROPE, 400-800 a.d. 



and classical literature seemed to be extinct. There was no 
tranquil leisure, and, therefore, little study. There was little 
security, and, therefore, little work. The Franks and Saxons 
were learning the rudiments of ci^'ilized life ; but the Latins 
were losing all but the rudiments — and they seemed to lose 
faster than the Teutons gained. 

But after all, the invasions did not uproot civilization. The 
barbarians felt a wholesome reverence for the Roman Empire and 
for all connected with it. They were awed by the marvelous 
devices, the massive structures, the stately pomp, of the civiliza- 
tion they had conquered. They did not wish to destroy all 
this : they wished to possess it. Much, of course, they did 
destroy. Part they ruined in the wanton mood of children, — 
as in the story of the warrior who dashed his battle-ax at the 
beautiful mosaic floor to see whether the swans swimming there 
were alive. But much survived ; and much which at the time 
seemed ruined was sooner or later to be recovered by the Teutons 
themselves. 

Outside Britain and North Italy, the conquests were attended 
with little fighting. When the Roman legions had been beaten 
in the field, the struggle was over. The provincials (largely 
German anyway) had become indifferent to a change in masters. 
The invaders settled among populations ten or fifty times their 
own numbers. The highest estimate for the whole Burgundian 
nation is eighty thousand. The Vandals counted no more. 
The Visigoths, when they conquered Spain, hardly exceeded 
thirty thousand warriors. At first the newcomers were the 
rulers and almost the only large landlords. They formed the 
government and the aristocratic forces in rural society. But the 
towns, so far as they survived, remained Roman;' and, almost 
unnoticed by the ruling classes, they preserved parts of the 
old culture and handicrafts. The old population, too, furnished 
most of the clergy. From this class — sole possessors of the art 
of writing — the Teutonic lords had to draw secretaries and 
confidential officers ; and by these advisers they were gradually 
persuaded to adopt many customs of the old civilization. 



TEUTONIC CODES OP LAW 443 

Most important of all, the church itself lived on. True, the And in the 
barbarian converts to Christianity understood its teachings of "^^'^^ 
love and purity very imperfectly. Christianity raised the new 
nations ; but in the effort it was dragged down part way to their 
level. More emphasis was placed on ceremonies and forms. 
But in the darkest of the Dark Ages there were great numbers 
of priests and monks inspired with zeal for righteousness and 
love for men ; and on the whole, the church protected the weak, 
and stood for peace, industry, and right living. It was the 
salt that kept the world sweet for later times, and the chief 
force that made life bearable for myriads of men and women 
(Davis' Readings, II, No. 135). 

When the barbarians came into the Empire, their law was Teutonic 
unwritten custom. Much of it remained so, especially in <^°°®^ 
Britain ; but, under Roman influence, the conquerors on the 
continent soon put parts of their law into written codes (Davis' 
Readings, II, No. 133). Two features of these codes throw 
interesting sidelights upon the times. 

1. Offenses ivere atoned for by money-payments, varying from 
a small amount for cutting off the first joint of the little finger 
to the wergeld (man-money), or payment for taking a man's 
life. The wergeld varied, too, with the rank of the injured. 

2. When a man wished to prove himself innocent, or to prove Trial by 
another man guilty of some charge, he did not try to bring ^ippeal to 
evidence, as we do. Proof consisted in an appeal to God to shoiv 

the right. 

Thus in trial by compurgation the accused and accuser each 
swore solemnly to their statements, and each was backed by 
compurgators, — not witnesses but persons who swore they 
believed that their man was telling the truth. To swear falsely 
was to invite the divine vengeance, as in the boyish survival — 
"Cross my heart and hope to die" ; and stories are told of men 
who fell dead with the judicial lie on their lips. 

In trial by ordeal, the accused tried to clear himself by being 
thrown bound into water. , If he sank, he was innocent: the 



444 



STATE OF EUROPE, 400-800 a.d. 



pure element, it was believed, would not receive a criminal. 
Or he plunged his arm into boiling water, or carried red-hot 
iron a certain distance, or walked over burning plowshares; 
and if his flesh was uninjured, when examined some days later, 
he was declared innocent. All these ordeals were under the 
charge of the clergy, and were preceded by sacred exercises 
(Davis' Readings, II, 355 ff.). Such tests were sometimes made 
by deputy: hence our phrase to "go through fire and water" 

for a friend. Among the 
noble fighting class, the 
favorite trial came to be 
the trial by combat, — a 
judicial duel which was 
prefaced by religious cere- 
monies, and in which God 
was expected to " show the 
right." 



The Teutons intro- 
duced once more a 
system of growing law. 
Codification preserved 
the Roman law, but 
crystallized it. Teu- 
tonic law,, despite its 




Religious Preliminary to a Judicial 
Combat : Each party is making oath, 
on Bible and cross, to the justice of his 
cause. — From a fifteenth century manu- 
script. 



codes, remained for a long time crude and unsystematic; 
but it contained possibilities of further growth. The im- 
portance of this fact has been felt mainly in the English 
"Common Law," the basis of our American legal system. 



The conquest modified the political institutions of the con- 
querors in many ways. Three changes call for attention. 
. 1. The Teutonic kings became more absolute. At first they 
were little more than especially honored military chiefs, at the 
head of rude democracies. In the conquests, they secured large 
shares of confiscated land, so that they could reward their 



CHANGES IN TEUTONIC INSTITUTIONS 



445 






^JL\ 



supporters and build up a strong personal following. Their 
authority grew by custom, since, in the confusion of the times, 
all sorts of matters were necessarily left to their decisions. 
Moreover, the Roman idea of absolute power in the head of the 
state had its influence. With all its excellencies, the Roman 
law was imbued with the principle of despotism. A favorite 
maxim was, — " What the prince wills has the force of law." 

2. A new nobility of service appeared. The king rewarded his 
most faithful and trusted followers with grants of lands, and 
made them rulers (counts and dukes) over large districts. 

3. The Assemblies of 
freemen decreased in im- 
portance. They survived 
in England as occasional 
"Folkmoots," and in the 
Frankish kingdom as 
"Mayfields"; but they 
shrank into gatherings of 
nobles and officials assem- 
bled to hear the king's will. 

At the same time, while 
these assemblies of the whole 
nation died out or lost their 
democratic elements, they 
kept much of their old 
character for various local 
units, as in the counties oi 
the Teutonic kingdoms of England. Thus the Teutons did carry 
into the Roman world a new chance for democracy. They did not 
give us representative government ; but in England, as we shall 
see, representative institutions grew out of these local assemblies. 



A new 
kingship 








A Trial by Combat. — A companion 
piece to the foregoing illustration. 



A new 
nobility 



Everyday life in the seventh century was harsh and mean. Everyday 

The Teutonic conquerors disliked the close streets of a Roman gg^gjjth 

town ; but the villa, the residence of a Roman country gentle- century 
man, was the Roman institution which they could most nearly 



446 



STATE OF EUROPE, 400-800 a.d. 



appreciate. The new Teutonic kings lived not in town palaces, 
but on extensive farmsteads in the midst of forests. The new 
nobility, too, and other important men, were great landlords 
and lived in the open country, much as their kings did, in rude 




Seventh CenttJry Villa in Gaul, " restored " by Parmentier. 



but spacious "villas" of wood, inclosed perhaps by a moat 
and certainly by a wall of stakes driven into the ground. 

Population had shrunken terribly since the times of the early 
Roman Empire. In the north, during the invasions and the 
following disorder, most towns had been destroyed. If they 
were rebuilt at all, it was upon a small scale, and from wood 
or from the ruins of the old dwellings. The occupations of 
town-dwellers had mostly vanished. The town, surrounded 
by a rude palisade, was valued chiefly for a refuge, and for its 
convenient nearness to the church or cathedral which made its 
center. 

In the south, it is true, the old cities lived on, with a con- 
siderable degree of the old Roman city life. They kept up, 
too, some commerce with the East ; and sometimes colonies of 
Greek merchants dwelt in them. 



MONASTERIES 



447 



Everywhere, the great majority of the people were the poor Life of the 
folk who tilled the land for neighboring masters. Most of these ^°°^ 
toilers lived in mud hovels, or in cabins of rough boards, without 
floors and with roofs covered with reeds or straw. At the best, 
little more of their produce remained to them than barely 
enough to support life ; and they were constantly subject to 
the arbitrary will of brutal and greedy masters. At frequent 
intervals, too, they suffered terribly from pestilence and famine. 



^f#^ 



This picture of ordinary seventh-century life helps us to Eastern 
understand the monastic life which became then popular. In ^®''™^*^ 
the old East, holiness was believed to be related to withdrawal 
from the world, to con- 
tempt for human pleas- 
ures, and to disregard for 
natural instincts, even love 
for mother, wife, and child. 
This unnatural, ascetic 
tendency invaded Eastern 
Christianity, and, as early 
as the third century, in the 
oases of the Egyptian and 
Syrian deserts there ap- 
peared tens of thousands 
of hermits, who strove 
each to save his own soul 
by tormenting his body.^ 
Then, in some cases these 
fugitives from society 
united into small societies 
of their own, with com- 
mon rules of life. 

In the latter part of the fourth century this idea of religious European 
_ ^ '^ ^ monas- 

communities was transplanted to the West, and the long anarchy ticism 




Abbey of Citeaux — from a miniature 
in a twelfth century manuscript. Note 
the fields divided into strips and see 
p. 486. 



1 Davis' Readings in Ancient History, IT, No. 136, has an account of an 
extreme and famous instance; 



448 



STATE OF EUROPE, 400^800 a.d. 



following the invasions made such a life peculiarly inviting. 
European monasticism differed widely, however, from its 
model in the East. The monks of the West, within their quiet 
walls, wisely sought escape from temptation, not in idleness, 
but in active and incessant work. Their motto was, " To work 
is to pray." 

The growth of many a rich monastery was a romantic story 
of humble and heroic beginnings and of noble service to men. 
A body of devoted enthusiasts, uniting themselves for mutual 
religious aid, would raise a few rude buildings in a pestilential 
swamp or in a wilderness. Gradually their numbers grew. By 
their toil, the, marsh was drained, or the desert became a garden. 
The first simple structures gave way to massive and stately 
towers. Lords gave lands ; fugitive serfs tilled them ; villages, 
and perhaps wealthy towns, sprang up upon them under the 
rule of the abbot. ^ Similar institutions for women offered a 
much-needed refuge for that sex in that rough age. During 
the seventh century, the majority of cultivated and refined' 
men and women in Western Europe lived within monastic 
walls. More than one king voluntarily laid aside his crown 
to seek peace there from the horrible confusion of the world. 

During all the Middle Ages, the monks were the most skillful 
and industrious tillers of the soil. They copied and illustrated 
manuscripts with loving care ; and they themselves produced 
whatever new literature Europe had for many centuries. They 
taught gladly all that they themselves knew to any youth of 
the countryside who would come to their instruction, so fitting 
many a poor peasant boy to become a powerful churchman, 
the master of lords and kings. Monks did not go out into the 
world to save souls ; but their doors were always open to all 
who would come to them for help. In particular they cared 
for the poor and suffering. Their lives of quiet industry and 
devotion, their abstinence and self-sacrifice, seemed more than 



1 A large monastery was an abbey, and its elected head was an abbot (from 
a Syrian word abba, meaning father). An ordinary monastery called its 
head a prior, — "the first in place." 



OUR HERITAGE FROM ROMAN AND TEUTON 449 



human to other men during those evil ages of violence and 
brutality. For centuries the thousands of monasteries that 
dotted Western Europe were its only almshouses, inns, asylums, 
hospitals, and schools, and the sole refuge of learning. (Davis' 
Readings, II, 137, gives the monastic rules.) 

We can now sum up the inheritance with which "Western 
Europe" began. 

Through Rome the Western peoples were the heirs of Greek 
mind and Oriental hand, including most of those mechanical 
arts which had been built 
up in dim centuries by 
Egyptian, Babylonian, and 
Phoenician ; and though 
much of this inheritance, 
both intellectual and ma- 
terial, was forgotten or 
neglected for hundreds of 
years, most of it was finally 
to be recovered. Rome 
also passed on Christianiiy 
and the organization of 
the church. 

Rome herself had contributed (1) a universal language, which 
was to serve as a common medium of learning and intercourse 
for all the peoples of Western Europe ; (2) Roman law ; (3) mu- 
nicipal institutions, in southern Europe ; (4) the imperial idea, 
— the conception of one, lasting, universal, supreme authority, 
to which the world owed obedience. 

The fresh blood of the Teutons reinvigorated the old races, 
and so provided the men who for centuries were to do the 
world's work. The Teutons contributed, too, certain definite 
ideas and institutions, — (1) a new sense of personal inde- 
pendence ; (2) a bond of personal loyalty between chieftain 
and follower, in contrast with the old Roman loyalty to the 
state ; (3) a new chance for democracy, especially in the popular 




Monks tn Field Work. — From Lacroix, 
after a thirteenth century manuscript. 



Western 
Europe's 
heritage 
from the 
ages 



450 OUR HERITAGE FROM ROMAN AND TEUTON 

assemblies of different grades in England ; (4) a growing system 
of law. 

Out of Roman and Teutonic elements there had already de- 
veloped a new serf organization of labor ; a new nobility ; and 
a new Romano-Teutonic kingship — and soon there was to 
grow out of them a new feudalism (ch. xlix below). 



The use of the words German and Teuton in the above treat- 
ment calls for a word of caution. They are the only proper 
words to use, but they may easily give rise to misunderstanding. 
The mingling of Teutonic and Roman elements in our civiliza- 
tion took place not in Germany but in the lands we call Eng- 
land, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. The people who 
brought the Teutonic contributions into those lands were not 
the ancestors of the modern Germans — any more than were 
other Teutons, like the Danes and Swedes, who never entered 
Germany : they were, in part, the ancestors of English, French, 
Spanish, and Italian peoples. They left Germany fourteen 
hundred years ago ; and the civilization which grew up in 
those Western lands, after these migrations into them, was 
the civilization of a new "Western Europe." Then, some 
three or four centuries later, as we shall see, Christianity 
and armed conquest began, in a measure, to carry this new 
civilization east from these lands into the forests of savage 
and heathen Germany, and, even farther, among the Prus- 
sians of the Baltic coast. 



CHAPTER XLV 

THE FRANKS AND THE PAPACY 

During the centuries of confusion and fusion, two organizing 
forces grew up — the Prankish state and the Papacy ; and one 
great danger appeared — Mohammedanism. 

The founder of Frankish greatness was Clovis^ a brutal savage Empire of 
of shrewd intellect. In 481, he became king of one of several ® ^^^ ^ 
little tribes of Franks on the lower Rhine. Fifty years later, 
thanks to a continuous policy of war and perfidy, his sons 
ruled an empire comprising modern France, the Netherlands, 
and much of Western Germany. Such territory to-day would 
make the greatest power in Europe. In the sixth and 
seventh centuries it was practically the only power. Gothic 
Spain was weakened by quarrels between Arian and Catholic ; 
Italy was torn to shreds ; Britain was in savage chaos (p. 471) ; 
non-Frankish Germany was filled with savage, unorganized 
tribes. 

The family of Clovis is known, from his grandfather Merovig, The " Do- 
as Merovingian. It kept the throne for two centuries — a ^^ ^j^|jj. 
dismal story of greed, family hate, treachery, and murder, and, mayors 
toward the end, of indolence and incapacity. The last of the 
Merovingian kings were mere phantom rulers who earned the 
name of "Do-nothings." All real power was exercised by a 
mayor of the ■palace. Originally this officer was a chief domestic, 
the head of the royal household ; but, one by one, he had with- 
drawn all the powers of government from the indolent kings, 
and had even made his office hereditary. Once a year, the 
long-haired king himself was carried forth in stately procession 
on his ox-cart, to be shown to the Assembly of the May field. 
The rest of the time he lived, on some obscure estate, in swinish 
pleasures that brought him to an early grave. 

451 



452 



RISE OF THE FRANKS 



About 650, the Prankish state seemed ready to fall to pieces. 
The Franks themselves had spread very little south of the Loire ; 
but even this northern part of the state was divided into two 
kingdoms : Austrasia, the kingdom of the East Franks, had 
remained German in character; Neustria, the kingdom of the 
West Franks, had more of the Roman civilization and claimed 
greater dignity. While these two divisions struggled for su- 
premacy, German Bavaria and Roman Aquitaine became 
practically independent under native dukes. But about the 
year 700, a great mayor, Charles, known as Martel ("the 




Repast in the Hall of a Frankish Chieftain of the eighth century. 

Hammer") began to restore union and order by crushing blows 
right and left. 

And none too soon. For the Mohammedans now attacked 
Europe. Except for the long pounding by " the Hammer of the 
Franks," there would have been no Christian power able to with- 
stand their onset — and Englishmen and Americans to-day 
might be readers of the Mohammedan Koran instead of the 
Christian Bible. 

A century after Clovis built up the empire of the Franks, a 
better man, out of less promising material, built a mighty power 
in Arabia. Until that time, Arabia had had little to do with 



RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 453 

human progress. It was mainly desert, with occasional small 
oases, and with strips of tillable land near the Red Sea. In 
this last district, the tribes had gained some mechanical skill 
and possessed a few small cities. The rest of the Arabs were 
wandering shepherds, — poor and ignorant, dwelling in black 
camel 's-hair tents, living from their sheep and by robbery, and 
worshiping sticks and stones. The inspiring force that was to 
lift them to a higher life, and fuse them into a world-conquering 
nation, was the fiery enthusiasm of Mohammed. 

Mohammed was born at Mecca, the largest city of Arabia, Mohammed 
about 570. He never learned to read ; but his speech was p.-.L , „ 
ready and forceful, and his manner pleasing and stately. As 
a youth, he was modest, serious, and truthful, — so that as a 
hired camel-driver, he earned the surname "the Faithful." 
He had always been given to occasional periods of religious And his 
enthusiasm and ecstasy, watching and praying alone in the , f.^^®7, 
desert for days at a time, as indeed many Arabs did. In such 
a lonely vigil, when he was a respected merchant of forty years, 
God appeared to him (he said) in a wondrous vision, revealing 
to him a higher religion and ordering him to preach it to his 
countrymen. At first, Mohammed seems to have doubted 
whether this vision were not a subtle temptation by the devil ; 
but his wife convinced him that it came truly from heaven, and 
he entered upon his mighty task. He really drew the best 
features of his new religion from Jewish and Christian teachings, 
with which he had become somewhat acquainted in his travels 
as a merchant. The two central requirements were jaith and 
obedience. A "true believer" must accept only the one God, 
Allah, and offer complete submission (Islam) to his will. 

The Koran,^ the " sacred book " made up of Mohammed's teach- 
ings, taught a higher morality than the Arabs had known, — not 
so very unlike that of the Ten Commandments ; but it accepted 
also certain evil customs of the time, such as slavery and polyg- 
amy, and it attracted converts by its sensuous appeals to future 
pleasures or pains. At the "Last Day," all souls would be 
1 See extracts inOgg's Source Book, No. 13. 



454 



RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 



gathered to judgment. Then all sinful Mohammedans, together 
with all "Unbelievers," would be cast into an everlasting hell 
of scalding water covered with thick clouds of smoke. True 
believers, on the other hand, were to enter the joys of an eternal 
Paradise, to recline, in the midst of lovely gardens, on couches 
of gold and jewels, where they would be served constantly by 
beautiful maidens (houris) with delicious foods and wines. 

For twelve years the new faith grew slowly. A few friends 
accepted Mohammed at once as a prophet ; but the bulk of 
his fellow townsfolk jeered at the claim, and when be con- 
tinued to order them to put away their stone idols, they drove 
him from Mecca. Mohammed barely escaped from his home 
with his life. This flight is the Hegira (622 a.d.), the point from 
which the Mohammedan world still reckons time. 

Now Mohammed converted the tribes of the desert, and 
then took up the sword. His fierce warriors proved themselves 
almost irresistible, conquering many a time against overwhelm- 
ing odds. They felt sure that to every man there was an 
appointed time of death, which he could neither delay nor hasten, 
and they rejoiced in death in battle, as the surest admission 
to the joys of Paradise. "The sword," said Mohammed, "is 
the key to heaven. . . . Whoso falls in battle, all his sins are for- 
given ; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent 
as vermilion and odoriferous as musk." 

Before his death, ten years after the Hegira, Mohammed was 
master of all Arabia. Eighty years later, his followers stood 
victorious upon the Oxus, the Indus, the Black Sea, the Atlantic, 
— rulers of a realm more extensive than that of Rome at its 
height. Within the span of one human life, the Mohammedans 
had won all the old Asiatic empire of Alexander the Great, and 
all North Africa besides ; and drawing together the sweep- 
ing horns of their mighty crescent, they were already trying to 
enter Europe from both east and west, by the narrow straits' 
of Gibraltar and the Hellespont. 

The Arabs had overrun Syria and Asia Minor, and in 672, 
they besieged Constantinople itself; but the hero-emperor. 



BATTLE OF TOURS, 732 a.d. 455 

Constantine IV, repulsed them, and saved the Western world. 
In 717 the Saracens returned to the attack; but another The Greek 
vigorous ruler had just seized the throne at Constantinople, g^g^^ 
This was Leo the Isaurian, who was to begin another glorious Europe 
line of Greek emperors. Leo had only five months in which to 
prepare for the terrific onset of the Mohammedans ; but once 
more the Asiatics were beaten back — after a twelve months' 
siege. Arabian chroniclers themselves say that only thirty 
thousand survived of a host of one hundred and eighty thousand 
well-appointed warriors who began the siege. The most formi- 
dable menace to Europe ivore itself away on the walls of the " City 
of Constantine," defended by its newly invented "Greek fire" ; ^ 
but in 711 the Arabs did enter Spain and were soon masters of Saracens 
the peninsula, except for remote mountain fastnesses. Then, conquer 
pouring across the Pyrenees, the Mohammedan flood spread 
over Gaul, even to the Loire, and it " seemed that the crescent And invade 
was about to round to the full." ^^^ 

But the danger completed the reunion of the Prankish state. Martel at 

The duke of Aquitaine, long in revolt against Prankish rule, "?' 

. . 732 A.D. 

fled to the camp of Charles Martel for aid against the Moham- 
medan; and, in 732, in the plains near Tours, the "Hammer 
of the Pranks" with his close array of mailed x\ustrasian in- 
fantry met the Arab host. Prom dawn to dark, on a Saturday 
in October, the gallant, turbaned horsemen of the Saracens 
hurled themselves in vain against the Franks' stern wall of iron. 
At night the surviving Arabs stole silently from their camp 
and fled back behind the shelter of the Pyrenees. 

1 A combustible made, probably, by mixing naphtha, sulphur, and pitch. 
It could not be extinguished by water, and it was the most terrible weapon 
of warfare until the invention of gunpowder. It was to be used, later, with 
terrible effect by the Mohammedans themselves. As late as 1250, Western 
Europe was still ignorant of its secret, and an old crusader who first saw it 
in a night battle described it as follows: "Its nature was in this wise, that 
it rushed forward as large round as a cask of verjuice, and the tail of the 
fire which issued from it was as big as a large-sized spear. It made such a 
noise in coming that it seemed as if it were a thunderbolt from heaven, and 
it looked Hke a dragon flying through the air. It cast such a brilliant light 
that in the camp we could see as clearly as if it were noonday." 



456 



EUROPE SAVED AT TOURS 



The battle of Tours, just one hundred years after Moham- 
med's death, is the high-water mark of the Saracen invasion. 
A few years later, the Mohammedan world, like Christendom, 
split into rival empires. The Caliph^ of the East built, for 
his capital, the wonderful city of Bagdad on the Tigris. The 




Court of the Lions, Alhambra, one of the finest examples of 
Moorish architecture. 

Caliphate of the West fixed its capital at Cordova in Spain. 
The two Caliphates were more or less hostile to each other, and 
the critical danger to Western civilization for the time passed 
away. The repulses at Constantinople and at Tours rank with 
Marathon and Salamis, in the long struggle between Asia and 
Europe. 

1 Caliph (" successor") became the title of the successors of Mohammed. 



RISE OF THE PAPACY 



457 



The Frank had saved Europe from Africa. Next he allied 
to himself the Papacy — whose rise we will now trace. 

Before 300 a.d., the bishop at Rome had put forth a vigorous 
claim to supremacy over all the Christian church, somewhat 
as follows : Christ had especially intrusted the government 
of his church to Peter ; Peter had founded the church at Rome ; 
hence the bishops of Rome, successors of Peter, held spiritual 
sway over Christendom.^ 

Rome had advantages that helped to make good this claim. 

(1) Men inevitably thought of Rome as the world-capital. 

(2) The Latin half of the Empire had no other church founded 
by an Apostle, nor did it contain any other great city : Rome's 
rivals were all east of the Adriatic. (3) The decline of the Em- 
pire in the West, after the barbarian invasions, left the bishops of 
Rome freer from imperial interference than the Eastern bishops 
were. (4) A long line of remarkable popes, by their states- 
manship and their missionary zeal, confirmed the place of Rome 
as head of the Western churches. (The word pope — " papa," 
or "father" — did not become an official term until 1085.) 

Even in the West, however, until about 700 a.d., most men 
looked upon the bishop of Rome only as one among five great 
patriarchs — though the most loved and trusted one. But the 
eighth century eliminated the other four 'patriarchs, so far as Western 
Christendom ivas concerned. In quick succession, Alexandria, 
Jerusalem, and Antioch fell to the Saracens, and, soon afterward, 
remaining Christendom split into rival Latin and Greek churches, 
grouped respectively around Rome and Constantinople. 

For some time, indeed, while extending their spiritual au- 
thority over the West, the popes had been also growing into 
temporal ^ monarchs over a small state in Italy. In the break- 
up of Italy (p. 438) the imperial governor at Ravenna was cut 
off from Rome and the neighboring territory — which, however. 



The papal 
claim to 
headship 



Rome's 
advantages 



Rome's 

rivals 

eliminated 



Growth of 
temporal 
power as an 
imperial 
lieutenant 



1 Robinson's Readings, I, 62-73, has a good statement, with extracts 
from several of the early Fathers ; see especially the argument of Pope Leo. 

2 Temporal, in this sense, is used to apply to matters of this world, in 
contrast to the spiritual matters of the world eternal. 



458 



RISE OF THE PAPACY 



still belonged to the Empire. Bishops previously had held 
considerable civil authority. This new condition left the 
bishop of Rome the only lieutenant of the Empire in his isolated 
district; and the difficulty of communication with Constan- 
tinople (and the weakness of the emperors) made him, in prac- 
tice, an independent ruler. 

True the emperors did not permit this papal independence 
without a struggle. One pope was dragged from the altar to 
a dungeon; another died in lonely exile in the Crimea. But 
the Roman population of Italy rallied round its great bishops 
against the disliked Greek power, and the popes more and 
more came to defy the emperors. When the great reforming 
emperor, Leo the Isaurian, tried to collect imperial taxes in 
Italy, the pope sanctioned resistance — which proved successful 
because a storm wrecked Leo's expedition. 

Then came the final and formal separation, occasioned by a 
dispute over the use of images — the iconoclast (image-breaking) 
quarrel. An influential party in the Greek Empire felt that 
the ignorant degraded images in the church service from sym- 
bols into idols, and Leo the Isaurian ordered all images removed 
from the churches. The West clung to their use as aids to 
worship ; and the Popes Gregory II and III forbade obedience 
to the emperor and even excommunicated^ him. 

These events, then, mark the "Great Schism" of Christen- 
dom into two great churches, the Latin and the Greek, along 
the ancient line of partition between Latin and Greek culture. 
Before 800 a.d., the image users in the East regained the 
throne there, in the Empress Irene; but there was no reunion 
of the two halves of the Christian world. The churches of 
Russia and Greece and the Balkan Slav states still belong to 
the Greek communion. 

The popes were elected at this early time by the clergy and 

people of Rome ; but, until these events, they always asked or 

accepted confirmation from the Emperor, like other bishops of 

the day. Henceforward, however, bishops of Rome assumed 

1 Excommunication is explained on p. 498. 



SEPARATION OF GREEK AND LATIN CHURCHES 459 

office without sanction from Constantinople. Fifty years later, 
Pope Hadrian made the political separation more apparent by 
ceasing to date events by the reigns of the Emperors. Instead, he 
called a certain day "December 1, of the year 781 in the reign 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Redeemer," — and so 
introduced our method of counting time (p. 404). 




Cloisters of St. John Lateran. 



But as soon as the popes had made themselves independent Popes and 
of the distant Greek Empire, they were threatened by the Lom- °™ " 
bards. The king of Lombardy had seized Ravenna, and was 
preparing to seize Rome and to unite Italy. The popes appealed 
for aid to the Franks. The Frankish mayor needed papal sanc- 
tion for his own plans just then ; and so the two organizing 
forces in Western Europe joined hands. 

Charles the Hammer had been succeeded as mayor by his son 
Pippin the Short. This prince soon began to think of taking 
the name of king. To reconcile the Frankish nation to such 



460 



THE FRANKS AND THE PAPACY 



an act, he had sent an embassy to the pope, in 750, to ask 
whether this was " a good state of things in regard to the kings 
of the Franks." The pope, who needed Pippin's aid against 
the Lombards, replied, " It seems better that he who has the 
power should be king rather than he who is falsely called so." 
Thereupon Pippin shut up the last Merovingian in a monas- 
tery and assumed the crown (Davis' Readings, II, No. 145). 

A little later. Pope Stephen visited the Prankish court and 
consecrated Pippin king, as the old Hebrew prophets did the 
Hebrew kings. All previous Teutonic kings had held their 
kingship by the will of their people, but this act began for 
European monarchs the sacred character of "the Lord's 
anointed." On his part, Pippin conquered Lombardy, and 
gave to the pope the territory which the Lombards had recently 
seized from Ravenna — a strip of land reaching across Italy 
(map after p. 530). This "Donation of Pippin" created the 
modern principality of "the Papal States," or "States of the 
Church," — to last until 1870. 



CHAPTER XLVI 



THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 



"A 'patch of light in a vast gloom." 

In 768 Pippin was succeeded as king of the Franks by his son 
Karl, the greatest medieval ruler. This Karl the Great stamped 
himself upon his age, and his masterful mind even cast its 
shadow forward over many centuries. He was known in his 
own day as CaroJus Magnus (the Latin form of his name), and 
he is best known to us by the French form, 
Charlemagne. We must not think of him, 
however, as a Frenchman : he was a full- 
blooded Teuton. His secretary (and inti- 
mate friend), Einhard, has left us a vivid 
pen-portrait of him (Davis' Readings, II). 
He was '^' large and robust, and of com- 
manding stature. . . . His eyes were 
large and animated ; his nose, somewhat 
long. He had a fine head of gray hair, 
and his face was bright and pleasant. . . . 
Whether standing or sitting, he showed 
great dignity." He dressed simply, ate 
and drank temperately, and delighted in 
riding and hunting. "He was ready of 
speech, and expressed himself with great 
clearness." 

Charlemagne was a statesman rather than a fighter ; but he 
found his realm still threatened by barbarian Germans on the 
east and by Mohammedan Moors on the south, and his long 
reign of a half century was filled with ceaseless border wars. 
He thrust back the Saracens to the Ebro, redeeming a strip of 

461 



Karl the 
Great 




Seal of Charle- 
magne. (This is the 
nearest approach we 
have to a likeness of 
Charlemagne- The 
so-called " pictures" 
of Charlemagne in 
many books are 
purely imaginative, 
by artists of later 
centuries.) 



Repulse of 
barbarian 
danger : 
civilization 
expanded 



462 



THE EMPIRE OP C'HARLEMAGNE 



Spain ; ^ and, in a long pounding of thirty years, he subdued 
the heathen Saxons amid the marshes and trackless wilderness 
between the lower Rhine and the Elbe. All this district, so 
long a peril to the civilized world, was colonized by Prankish 
pioneers and planted with Christian churches. In such bloody 
and violent ways Charlemagne laid the foundation for modern 
Germany. 

Other foes engaged energy which the great king would rather 
have given to reconstruction. The vassal Lombard king attacked 
the pope. After fruitless expostulation, Charlemagne marched 
into Italy, confirmed Pippin's "Donation," and at Pavia 
placed the ancient iron crown of Lombardy upon his own 
head, as king of Italy. And when restless Bavaria rebelled 
once more, Charlemagne subdued it thoroughly, sending its 
duke into a monastery. 

Thus, Visis;oth, Lombard, Burgund, Frank, Bavarian, Alle- 
mand, Saxon, — all the surviving Teutonic peoples, except 
those in the Scandinavian peninsula and in Britain, — were 
united into one Christian Romano-Teutonic state. ^ 

Beyond this Teutonic Europe, to the east, stretched away 
savage Slavs and Avars, still hurling themselves from time to 
time against the barriers of civilization. In the closing part of 
his reign, Charlemagne attacked barbarism in these strong- 
holds — as the best way to defend the civilized world. Gradu- 
ally the first line of peoples beyond the Elbe and Danube were 
reduced to tributary kingdoms. Charlemagne made no attempt, 
however, to incorporate them into his Teutonic state, or to force 
Christianity upon them. He meant them to serve as buffers 
against their untamed brethren farther east. 

But no mere "King of the Franks" could hold in lasting 
allegiance rival Teutonic peoples — Visigoth, Lombard, Saxon 

1 The defeat of Charlemagne's rear guard, on the return, by the wild 
tribesmen of the Pyrenees, in the pass of Roncesvalles, gave rise to the 
legend embodied later in the Song of Roland, the most famous poem of the 
early Middle Ages. 

2 The population was largely Roman still ; but, — in Italy and South 
Gaul, as in Saxon-land, — the rule, for themost part, was in Teutonic hands. 




THE TWO ROMAN EMPIRES 463 

— or the old Roman populations. And so Charlemagne now The 
strengthened his authority over his wide realms by reviving the ^ °.™^^ 
dignity and magic name of the "Roman Empire" in the West, revived in 
There was already a "Roman Emperor" at Constantinople, e West 
whose authority, in theory, extended over all Christendom ; but 
just at this time Irene, the empress-mother, put out the eyes 
of her son, Constantino 
VI, and seized the im- 
perial power (p. 458). 
To most men. East 
and West, it seemed 
monstrous that a 
woman should pretend 
to the scepter of the Silver Coin of Charlemagne. — Note the 
world ; and on Christ- Y^f ^°™ .^^^^ "t^"^^ P'^'"^?"^ ^^^^^^J- ^^- 

' for iinish with Justinian s coin, p. 402. 

mas Day, 800 a.d., as 

Charlemagne at Rome knelt in prayer at the altar. Pope 
Leo III placed upon his head a gold crown and saluted him 
as Charles Augustus, Emperor of the Romans. The act was 
ratified by the enthusiastic acclaim of the multitude. 

In theory, Rome had chosen a successor to Constantine VI, The two 
just deposed at Constantinople. In actual fact, however, the ^°°^3° 
deed of Leo and Charlemagne divided the Christian world into 
two rival empires, each calling itself the Roman Empire. Two 
things regarding the restored Empire must be borne in mind. 

1. Neither Empire was really Roman. As the Eastern grew 
more and more Oriental, the Western grew more and more Teu- 
tonic. Charlemagne and his successors had to be crowned at 
Rome. But the German Rhine, not the Italian Tiber, was the 
real center of their state ; and Aachen, not Rome, was their real 
capital. 

2. The new Empire arose out of a union of the papacy and 
the Frankish power. In later times the union was expressed in 
the name. The Holy Roman Empire. The Empire had its 
spiritual as well as its temporal head, and dissensions were after- 
ward to arise between the two. 



464 



THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 



The glory and prosperity of the old Empire had not been 
restored with its name. To accomplish that was to be the 
work of centuries more. In 800 the West was ignorant and 
wretched. There was much barbarism in the most civilized 
society. Roads had fallen to ruin, and murderous brigands 
infested those that remained. There was little communication 
between one district and another. Money was little known 
and trade hardly existed. Almost the only industry was rude 
farming by serfs. Even Charlemagne was always pinched for 
money. He could raise no "taxes." He did exact "service 
in person" in war and peace, and the treasury received some 
fines, and occasional "gifts" from wealthy men; but its chief 
support came from the royal farms scattered through the king- 
dom. 

To make sure of this last revenue in the cheapest way (and 
at the same time to attend to the wants of his vast realms), the 
king and court constantly traveled from farm to farm, consum- 
ing the produce upon the spot. No commercial traveler of to- 
day is so constantly on the move, or encounters such hardship 
on the road. Charlemagne . took the most minute care, too, 
that his farms should be well tilled, and that each one should 
pay every egg due him (Davis' Readings, II, No. 149). 

To keep in touch with the feelings of his many peoples, 
Charlemagne made use of the old Teutonic assemblies in fall 
and spring. Sometimes this "Mayfield" gathering comprised 
the bulk of the men of the Frankish nation. At other times, 
only the great nobles and churchmen came (p. 445). To these 
gatherings were "published" (read) the capitularies, or col- 
lections of laws decreed by the king ; but the assembly was not 
itself a legislature. At the most, it could only bring to bear 
upon the king mildly the force of public opinion. A modern 
French historian (Coulanges) pictures a Mayfield thus : 



" An immense multitude is gathered in a plain, under tents. It is 
divided into separate groups. The chiefs of these groups assemble 
about the king, to deliberate with him. Then each of them tells his 
own group what has been decided, perhaps consults them, but at any 




Lon^tnde 6 



10 Longitude 15 



35 40 45 60 



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from 25 Greenwich 30 



ATTEMPTS TO REVIVE LEARNING 465 

rate obtains their consent as easily as the king had obtained his ; for 
these men are dependent on him, just as he is on the king. . . . The 
king's will decided everything : the nobles only advised." 

Charlemagne made brave attempts also to revive learning. Attempts 
He never learned to write ; but he spoke and read Latin, as well fg^^^JL® 
as his native German, and he understood some Greek. For the 
age, he was an educated man, and he wished earnestly to make 
more learning possible for others. The difficulties were almost 
beyond our comprehension, — greater even than in Russia 
to-day. There secvied no place to begin. Not only the nobles, 
but even many of the clergy were densely ignorant. The only 
tools to work with were poor. 

Still much was done. Charlemagne secured more learned 
men for the clergy. He set up schools in many of the mon- 
asteries and at the seats of some of the bishops, not only to 
train the clergy, but to teach all children to read, even those 
of serfs. Some of these schools, as at Tours and Orleans, lived 
on through the Middle Ages.^ For teachers, Charlemagne 
brought learned men from Italy, where the Roman culture best 
survived. He also established a famous "School of the Palace" 
for the nobles of the court ; and induced the scholar Alcuin to 
come from England to direct it. The Emperor himself, when 
time permitted, studied at the tasks of the youths, and delighted 
in taking part in the discussions of the scholars whom he had 
gathered about him. With great zeal, too, he strove to secure 
the true copying of valuable manuscripts. "Often," says one 
capitulary, "men desire to pray to God, but they pray badly 
because of incorrect books. Do not permit hoys to corrupt 
them. ... let men of mature age do the writing diligently." 

In the year 700, there were four great forces contending for 

1 The in-pouring of the Teutons between 378 and 476 is sometimes said 
to close Ancient history. Those who speak in this way divide history into 
Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, and give the name Medieval to the period 
from about 400 to about 1500 a.d. This book pays little attention to this 
old classification. But we sometimes use the expressions Medieval and 
Middle Ages, as descriptive terms, for the period to which they are com- 
monly applied. 



466 



THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE 



Western Europe, — the Greek Empire, the Saracens, the 
Franks, and the Papacy. By the year 800, Charles the Hammer 
and Charles the Great had shut out the first two and had fused 
the other two into the revived Roman Empire. True, Charle- 
magne was ahead of his age. After his death, barbarism and 
anarchy again broke in. But the imperial idea, to which he 
had given new life, was to be for ages the inspiration of the best 




The Fields of History to 800 a.d. 

minds as they strove against anarchy in behalf of order and 
progress. 

Charlemagne himself towers easily above all other men from 
the fifth century to the fifteenth — the mightiest figure of a 
thousand years. He stands for five great movements. He 
widened the area of civilization, created one Romano-Teutonic 
state, revived the Roman Empire for the outward form of that 
state, reorganized church and society, and began a revival of 
learning. He wrought wisely to combine the best elements of 
]Eloni9'n and Teutonic society, and so fused into one the various 



THE WORLD OF 800 a.d. 467 

streams of influence which the earlier world contributed to our 
modern world. 

Charlemagne left the world divided among the two Chris- 
tian "Roman" Empires and the two Mohammedan Caliphates. 
For centuries the Western Empire remained the least polished, 
least wealthy, least civilized of the four states. 

And yet that rude state, with its Teutonic fringes in England 
and Scandinavia, was the only one of the four great powers 
which was to make further progress. 

The scene of history had shifted to the West once more. 
This time, too, it had shrunken in size: Some Teutonic districts 
had been added ; but vast areas of the old Roman world had 
gone, — the Euphrates, the Nile, the Eastern Mediterranean, 
Europe itself east of the Adriatic and south of the Pyrenees. 
The Mediterranean, the center of the Roman world, had become 
an ill-guarded moat between Christian Europe and Moham- 
medan Africa ; and its ancient place as the highway of civiliza- 
tion was taken over, as well as might be, by the Rhine and the 
North Sea. 

Foe Further Reading. — Emerton's Introduction to the Middle Ages 
or Masterman's Dawn of Medieval Europe. Einhard's Life of Charle- 
magne is published in Harper's Half-Hour series. Davis' Charlemagne 
and Hodgkin's Charles the Great are readable and valuable books. 

Exercises 

1. Topical and "catchword" reviews: (a) The church; (h) The 
Franks; (c) The Empire. 

2. Dates to be added to earlier lists : 378, 410, 476, 732, 800. 
What events connected with the invasions can the student locate, in 

order, between 378 and 476? What events in the history of the Em- 
pire between 476 and 732 ? 

3. Battles. Add to previous lists five battles for the period 378-800. 



PART VII 
THE FEUDAL AGE, 800-1300 



CHAPTER XLVII 

THE NEW BARBARIAN ATTACK 

"From the Jury of the Northmen, Lord, deliver us." ■ 
IN THE Church Service op the Tenth Century. 



■ Prayer 



Charlemagne died in 814, and his Empire did not long outhve 
him. His briUiant attempt to bring Western Europe into order 
and union was followed by a dismal period of reaction and 
turmoil, while his ignoble descendants sought only to see who 
could grab the largest slices of the realm. The most impor- 
tant of these selfish contests closed m 843 with the Treaty of 
Verdun. 

This treaty begins the map of modern Europe. Lothair, 
Charlemagne's eldest grandson, held the title Emperor, and 
so he was now given North Italy and a narrow strip of land 
from Italy to the North Sea — that he might keep the two 
imperial capitals, Rome and Aachen (p. 463). The rest of the 
Empire, lying east and west of this middle strip, was broken 
into two kingdoms for Lothair's two brothers. 

The eastern kingdom was purely German. In the western, 
the Teutonic rulers were being absorbed rapidly into the older 
Roman and Gallic populations, to grow into France. Lothair's 
unwieldy "Middle Europe" proved the weakest of the three. 
Italy fell away at once. Then the northern portion, part 
French, part German, crumbled into "little states" that con- 
fused the map of Europe for centuries. Most of them were 

468 



THE NORSE VIKINGS 



469 



barian in- 
roads 



finally absorbed by thei'r more powerful neighbors on either 
side. Four survive as Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, and 
Switzerland. 

For a century after Verdun, political history remained a Degenerate 
bloody tangle of treacherous family quarrels, while the descend- ^° ngians 
ants of the Hammer and the Great were known as the Bald, 
the Simple, the Fat, the Lazy. And now distracted Europe 
was imperiled by a new danger from without. Once more 
barbarian invasions threatened the civilized world. On the New bar- 
east, hordes of wild Slavs and of wilder Hungarians broke across 
the frontiers, ravaged Germany, and penetrated sometimes 
even to Rome or to Toulouse in southern France — burning, 
slaying, ravishing, carrying off prisoners and all movable booty. . 
The Mohammedan Moors from Africa attacked Italy and Sicily, 
establishing themselves firmly in many districts and turning 
the Mediterranean into a Mohammedan lake. Fierce Norse 
pirates harried every coast, and, swarming up the rivers, pierced 
the heart of the land. 

The Norsemen were a new branch of the Teutons, and the The 
fiercest and wildest of that race. They dwelt in the Scandi- 
navian peninsulas, and 
were still heathen. They 
had taken no part in the 
earlier Teutonic invasions ; 
but, in the ninth century, 
population was becoming 
too crowded for their bleak 
lands, and they were driven 
to seek new homes. Some 
of them colonized distant 
Iceland, and set up a free 

republic there ; but the greater number resorted to raiding 
richer countries. The Swedes conquered Finns and Slavs on 
the east, while Danish and Norse "Vik-ings" (Sons of the 
Fiords) set forth upon "the pathway of the swans," in fleets 
sometimes of hundreds of boats, to ravage Western Europe. 



Norsemen 




Remains of a Viking Ship found buried 
in sand at Gokstad, Norway. It is of 
oak, unpainted, 79' 4" by 161' ; 6 feet 
deep in the middle. 



470 THE NORSE INVASIONS 

"The blast," they sang, "aids our oars; the hurricane is our 
servant." 

Charlemagne had maintained a navy to prevent pirate at- 
tacks ; but in the quarrels of his weak successors the Norse- 
men found their opportunity. They drove their light craft far 
up a river, into the heart of the land, and then, seizing horses, 
harried at will, even sacking cities like Hamburg, Rouen, Paris, 
Nantes, Bordeaux, Tours, Cologne, and stabling their horses 
in the cathedral of Aachen about the tomb of Charlemagne. A 
characteristic sport of the raiders, according to popular stories, 
was to toss babes upon their spears, from point to point. Espe- 
cially did they plunder and burn the churches and monasteries. 
There they found the most desirable booty, — richly woven 
and splendidly decorated altar cloths, vessels of gold and silver 
used in the services, and sometimes deposits of treasure. The 
boldest outlaws of Christendom trembled at the thought of 
violating these sacred sanctuaries ; but the scornful worshipers 
of Thor delighted in ravaging the defenseless temples of "the 
White Christ." When a band was defeated, the enraged people, 
on their part, flayed captives alive and nailed their skins to the 
church doors. 

At last, like the earlier Teutons, the Norsemen ceased to be 
mere plunderers and became conquerors. They settled the 
Orkneys and Shetlands and patches on the coasts of Scotland 
and Ireland, and finally established themselves in the north of 
France — named Normandy from them — and in the east of 
Britain. 



CHAPTER XLVIII 



BRITAIN BECOMES ENGLAND 



We must turn back to note how Britain had become England. 
In 408 the Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain to de- 
fend Italy against a threatened invasion by the Goths (p. 435). 
This left the dismayed Romanized Britons to defend themselves 
as best they could against Teutonic ravagers on the coasts 
and the wild Celts ^ of the Scottish mountains. The Britons 
called in the Teutons to beat off the other foe, and (449 a.d.) 
these dangerous protectors began to take the land for their own. 

Many little states were formed by the invaders, and these 
were welded gradually into larger units, until there appeared 
seven main Teutonic states : Kent, the kingdom of the Jutes ; 
Sussex, Essex, and Wessex (kingdoms of the South Saxons, 
East Saxons, and West Saxons) ; and East Anglia, Northum- 
bria, and Mercia, — kingdoms of the Angles, or English, who 
were to give their name to the whole island. (Map, p. 474.) 

This conquest, unlike that of Gaul and Spain, was very 
slow. It took the Teutons a century and a half (till about 
600) to master the eastern half of the island. For this there were 
four reasons : (1) The Angles and Saxons at home were living 
in petty tribes and therefore could make no great organized 
attack. (2) Coming by sea, they came necessarily in small 
bands. (3) They were still pagans: they spread ruthless de- 
struction and provoked desperate resistance, until, about 600 
A.D., Christianity began to win the heathen conquerors, 
(4) Britain had been less completely Romanized than the con- 

1- Celt includes the Highland Scots, the Irish, the Gauls of France, and 
the native Britons of Britain before the Teutonic conquest. At an earlier 
period the Celts seem to have covered much of Central Europe also. 

471 



Britain 
abandoned 
by Rome, 
408 A.D. 



The Anglo- 
Saxon 
conquest, 
449-600 
A.D. 



The con- 
quest slow 
and 
thorough 



472 



HOW BRITAIN BECAME ENGLAND 



tinental provinces were. There was more of forest and marsh, 
and a less extensive network of Roman roads ; hence the natives 
found it easier to make repeated stands. 

Because the conquest was slow, it was thorough. Eastern 
England became strictly a Teutonic land. Roman institutions, 
the Roman language, Christianity, even names for the most 
part, vanished, and the Romanized natives were slain, driven 
out, or enslaved. 

In the middle of the ninth century, Egbert, king of the West 
Saxons, brought all the Teutonic kingdoms in the island under 
his authority, — though he became merely a "head king" over 
jealous tributary kings ready to break away at any moment 
from a weak ruler. Then came the Danish invasions (p. 470), to 
shatter the new union but in the end to cement it more closely. 
The story fills a century. 

The Danes began their raids in the time of Egbert, and made 
their first attempt at permanent settlement in 850, when a band 
wintered on the southeastern coast. From that time their at- 
tempts ^rew more and more eager, until in 871, after a series 
of great battles, in the last of which the king of Wessex was 
slain, they became for a time masters of Saxon England. 

The power of Wessex soon revived, however, under Alfred 
the Great, brother of the slain king. Just after the Danish 
victory, Alfred had been driven into hiding in moors and fens. 
But from his secret retreats he made many a daring sally, and 
finally the Danes were defeated, baptized as Christians, and, 
by the Treaty of Wedmore f885), shut off in the northeast 
beyond Watling Street, an old Roman road from London to 
Chester. (See map, p. 474.) 

All the Saxon states of the South now willingly accepted the 
rule of Wessex for protection against the Dane, and Alfred gave 
the rest of his splendid life to healing the wounds of his South 
England. He reorganized the army, created the first English 
navy, and reared many a strong fort on commanding heights. 
But, also, — infinitely more important — he rebuilt the wasted 
towns, restored churches and abbeys, codified the laws, reformed 



ALFRED THE GREAT 



473 



the government, and ardently encouraged the revival of learn- Alfred's 
ing, eagerly seeking out teachers abroad. Alfred wrote later 
that when he began his work there was not a priest in the king- 
dom who understood the church service (Latin) that he mum- 
bled by rote. Moreover, there were no fit textbooks in English 
for the new schools ; so Alfred himself laboriously translated four 
standard Latin works into English, with much comment of 




St. Martin's Church, near Canterbury. — From a photograph. Parts 
of the building are very old, and may have belonged to a church of 
the Roman period. At all events, on this site was the first Christian 
church in Britain used by Augustine and fellow missionaries, sent out 
by Pope Gregory. They secured the right to use the building through 
the favor of Queen Bertha, a Christian Prankish princess who had 
married the King of Kent. A tomb, said to be Queen Bertha's, is 
shown in the church. 



his own, — adding thus to his other titles the well-deserved 
one of "the father of English prose." ^ His own day knew 
him by the honorable name of " Alfred the Truthteller." Later 
generations looked back at him as "England's Darling"; and 
few kings have so well earned his title of " the Great." A great 
historian has written of him, — 

1 There were a few ballads and one long poem (Song of Beowulf, p. 433) 
in English, but no prose literature until these translations by Alfred. 



474 HOW BRITAIN BECAME ENGLAND 




THE DANELAGH RECONQUERED 



475 



" To the scholars he gathered round him he seemed the very type of a 
scholar, snatching every hour he could find to read or listen to books. 
The singers of the court found in him a brother singer, gathering the 
old songs of his people to teach them to his children . . . and solacing 
himself, in hours of depression, with the music of the Psalms. He 
passed from court and study to plan buildings and instruct craftsmen 
in gold-work, or even to teach falconers and dog-keepers their busi- 
ness. . . . Each hour of the day had its appointed task. . . . 
'So long as I have Uved,' said he as life was closing, 'I have striven 
to live worthily ' : and again, ' I desire to leave to men who come after 
me a remembrance of me in good works.'" ^ ' 

The Danish king in the north of Britain was supposed to pay 
some vague obedience to the Saxon king ; but, in fact, the 
Danelagh, or Daneknv 
(land of the Danes' law), 
was an independent state. 
A second period of warfare 
(900-950) went to the 
reconquest of this Dane- 
lagh by the great suc- 
cessors of Alfred, — Ed- 
ward the Unconquered, 
Athelstane the Glorious, 
and Edmund the Doer of 

Deeds. These heroes of the house of Alfred completed the 
great king's work, and under Edgar the Peaceful, his great- 
grandson, the island rested in union and prosperity. Even 
the kings of the Celtic tribes in the far west and north came 
to Edgar's court to acknowledge his overlordship. 

Unlike the invasions of the fifth century, those of the ninth 
century did not create a new society. But (1) they brought in 
new Teutonic stock to invigorate northern France and eastern 
England ; (2) they helped along the political union of England ; 
(3) they played a part in breaking up the Empire of Charle- 
magne ; and (4) they forced Europe to take on a new military organi- 
zation for defense. This organization we call feudalism (ch. xlix). 

1 An admirable brief account of Alfred's work is in Green's History of the 
English People, I, 74-80. 




Plowing- — From an Anglo-Saxon 
manuscript in the British Museum. 



The Dane- 
lagh recon- 
quered by 
Alfred's 
successors 



Edgar the 
Peaceful, 
957-975 




CHAPTER XLIX 



The anarchy 
of the ninth 
century 
forces 
Europe into 
feudalism 



FEUDALISM 

"A protest of barbarism against barbarism." — Taine. 

After Charlemagne, the ninth century on the Continent became 
a time of indescribable horror. The strong robbed the weak, and 
brigands worked their will in plunder and torture. But man 
must seek some government that can protect life and property 
— and out of this anarchy emerged a new social order. Here 
and there, and in ever growing numbers, some petty chief — 
retired bandit, rude huntsman, or old officer of a king — planted 
himself strongly on a small domain, fortifying a stockaded house 
and gathering a troop of fighters under him to protect it. By 
so doing, he became the protector of others. The neighborhood 
turned gladly to any strong man as its defender and master. 
Weaker landlords surrendered ("commended") their lands to 
him, receiving them back as "fiefs." They became his vassals; 
he became their lord. The former "free peasants," on the 
lord's own lands and on the lands of his vassals, saw that they 
were no longer at the mercy of any chance marauder. They 
ventured again to plow and sow, and perhaps they were per- 
mitted in part to reap. On their part, they cultivated also the 
lord's crop, and paid him dues for house, for cattle, and for 

476 



THE FEUDAL CASTLE 477 

each sale or inheritance. The village became his village ; the 
inhabitants, his villeins. Fugitive wretches, too, without the 
old resident's claim to consideration, gathered on the lord's lands 
to receive such measure of mercy as he might grant, and usually 
sank into the class of serfs (p. 428), of whom there were already 
many on all estates.^ 

In return for the protection he gave, the lord assumed great Origin of 
privileges, unspeakably obnoxious in later centuries, but in ^^^'^p 
their origin connected with some benefit. The noble slew 
the wild beast — and came to have the sole right to hunt. 
As organizer of labor, he forced the villeins to build the mill 
(his mill), the oven, the ferry, the bridge, the highways. Then 
he took toll for the use of each, and later he demolished mills 
that the villeins wished to build for themselves. 

Finally each district had its body of mailed horsemen and its 
circle of frowning castles. These were the two outer marks of 
the new social order — which we call feudalism. 

Castles rose at every ford and above each mountain pass The feudal 
and on every hill commanding a fertile plain. At first they were *^*^"® 
mere wooden blockhouses, surrounded by palisades and ditches ; 
but they grew into enormous structures of massive stone whose 
gray ruins still dot the landscape in Europe. The outer walls 
were crowned by frowning battlements whence boiling pitch 
and masses of rock could be hurled down upon assailants. 
Usually the approach was across a moat (a ditch filled with 
water), by a narrow drawbridge, to a heavy iron gate with a 
portcullis (a heavy iron grating) which could be dropped from 
above. Usually, too, the bridge was protected by flanking 
towers, from whose slitlike windows bowmen could command 
the road. Sometimes the walls inclosed several acres, with a 
variety of buildings and with room to gather cattle and supplies, 
and to shelter the neighboring villagers during an enemy's 

1 After the Teutonic conquests of the fifth century, most common Teu- 
tonic freemen became small farmers. By these changes of the ninth cen- 
tury this free class almost disappeared from France, though it still survived 
in England. 



478 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 



raid ; but there was always an inner keep (an especially strong 
tower), with its own series of fortifications, and, if possible, 
with its own well. The keep was the especial residence of the 
lord's family,! and the stronghold where the last stand was 
made if the foe captured the outer defenses of the castle. Its 
walls were often enormously thick, so that a man crawling out 
of a window would have to creep three times his length. The 




BoDLAM Castle in England — pre.-^ont cindition of a fine medieval 
structure. Note the water in the moat. 



secret winding stairway to the upper floors was sometimes con- 
cealed within these walls ; and near the keep there was usually a 
small "postern" gate in the outer walls for the private use of 
the lord and his family. 

Upon even the early and simple castle, the Norse invader 
spent his force in vain ; and the mailed horsemen kept him from 
ravaging the open country. The old Frankish infantry had 
proved too slow to bring to bay the nomad Hungarians on their 

1 Some centuries later, the noble families began to escape from these 
damp and gloomy quarters by building a new "hall" for residence in time 
of peace. 



FEUDAL ARMOR 



479 



agile shaggy ponies, or the Danes with their swift boats. But 
now each castle was ready to pour forth its band of trained 
men-at-arms (horsemen in mail), headed by its knight, either to 
gather with other bands 
into an army, or by them- 
selves to cut off stragglers 
and hold the fords. The 
raider's day was over — 
but meanwhile the old 
Teutonic militia, in which 
every freeman had his 
place, had given way to 
an ironclad cavalry, the 
resistless weapon of a new 
feudal aristocracy. 

In the early feudal 
period, down to 1100, the 
defensive armor was an 
iron cap and a leather 
garment for the body, 
covered with iron scales.^ 
Next came coats of 
"chain-mail," reaching 
from neck to feet, with 
a hood of like material 
for the head. About 
1300 appeared the heavy 
"plate armor," and the helmet with visor, a suit weighing 
fifty pounds or more. In battle the warrior wore also a 
weighty shield, b'esides his long two-handed sword and his 
lance. The powerful war horse, too, had parts of his body 
protected by iron plates. (The student will enjoy "Mark 
Twain's" humorous conceit in A Yankee at King Arthur's 
Court as to the discomforts of medieval armor, and the difficulty 
of getting at a handkerchief !) The supremacy of the noble 
1 The warriors in the illustration on p. 503 wear this kind of armor. 




Entrance to a Feudal Castle. — From 
Gautier's La Chevalerie. The drawbridge 
crossed the moat. When it was raised, 
the portcullis (whose massive iron teeth 
can be seen in the doorway) was let fall. 



480 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 




over common men during the Middle Ages (before the invention 
of gunpowder) lay mainly in this equipment. He could ride 
down a mob of unarmed footmen (infantry) 
at will. The unarmored peasants and serfs 
who sometimes followed the feudal army 
to the field, to slay the wounded and 
plunder the dead, wielded only pikes or 
clubs and pitchforks. 

In government, feudalism was extreme 
decentralization. Each petty district was 
practically independent of every other 
district. The king had been expected to 
protect every corner of his realm. Actu- 
ally he had protected only some central 
district; but under feudalism each little 
chieftain proved able to protect his small 
corner, when he had seized the king's 
powers there. His territory was a little 
state. The great nobles coined money and 
made war like very kings. Of some 70,000 
feudal lords in France in the year 1000, about 200 held these 
sovereign powers. Indeed a vassal owed allegiance to his over- 
lords two or more grades above him only through the one overlord 
just above him. He must follow his immediate lord to war 
against them and even against his king. 

This decentralization was the result not only of military needs 
but also of economic ^ needs — of the lack of money and the lack 
of roads. Each locality was compelled to provide for its own 
needs. The rich man's wealth was all in land ; and he could 
make his land pay him only by renting it out for services or for 
produce. " Nobles " paid him for parts of it by fighting for him. 
Workers paid him for other parts by raising and harvesting his 
crops and by giving him part of their own. A man without land 
was glad to pay for the use of some in one way or the other. 
* Economics refers to wealth, as politics does to government. 



Knight in Plate 
Aemoh, visor up. 
— From Lacroix, 
Vie Militaire. 



LORDS AND VASSALS 



481 



In theory, the holder of any piece of land was a tenant of some 
higher landlord. The king was the supreme landlord. He let 
out most of the land of the kingdom, on terms of military ser- 
vice, to great vassals who swore fealty to him. Each of these 
parceled out most of what he received, on like terms, to smaller 
vassals ; and so on, perhaps through six or seven steps, until 
the smallest division was reached that could support a mailed 
horseman for the noble's life of fighting. 

In practice, there was no such regularity. The various grades 
were interlocked in the most confusing way. Except for the 
smallest knights, all landlords of the fighting class were "suze- 
rains" (liege lords); and, except perhaps the king, all were 
vassals. There was no great social distinction between lord 
and vassals. They lived on terms of familiarity and mutual 
respect. The "vassal" was always a "noble," and his service 
was always "honorable," — never to be confounded with the 
"ignoble" service paid by serfs and villeins. 

At first, fiefs were granted only for the lifetimes of the vassals ; 
but, in the ninth century, they became hereditary. In order the 
more easily to secure the services due them, the lords objected 
to a vassal's dividing a fief among his sons, and thus established 
the practice of "primogeniture" (inheritance of landed prop- 
erty by the eldest son only). On the Continent, however, all 
the sons of a noble kept their nobility, even if they were la7idless; 
and (unless they entered the clergy) it became their aim to win 
lands, by serving some great lord who might have fiefs to 
bestow. In England the term "noble" had a much narrower 
meaning : it applied only to the greatest lords, and to their 
eldest sons after them. 

The receiving of a fief was accompanied by the solemn cere- 
mony of homage. This was a sort of "bargain" between lord 
and vassal. The future vassal, with head uncovered and sword 
ungirt, knelt before the lord, placed his folded hands between 
the lord's hands, and swore to be the lord's "man" (homo). 
The lord raised him from his knees, gave him the " kiss of peace," 
invested him with the fief, — usually by presenting him with a 



Feudal 
land- 
holding 



482 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 




sword or a clod of earth as a symbol, — and promised to defend 
him in it. 

The vassal was to present himself, at the call of his lord, to 
serve in war, with followers according to the size of his fief, but 
only for short times and usually not to go "out of the realm." 
He must serve also in the lord's "court" twice or thrice a year, 
to "advise and consent" in matters of policy and to give judg- 
ment in legal disputes between vassals. A vassal, accused even 

by his lord, could be con- 
demned only by this judg- 
ment of his peers (pares), 
or equals. The lord was 
only the presiding officer, 
not the judge. 

The vassal did not pay 
the lord "taxes," in the 
usual sense of that word, 
but on certain special oc- 
casions he did have to 
make contributions in money. (1) Upon receiving a fief, either 
as a gift or as an inheritance, he paid the lord a sum called a 
relief, commonly a year's revenue. (2) If he wished to sell his 
fief, or to sublet part of it, he was obliged to pay for the lord's 
consent. (3) He made payments known as aids, — to ransom 
the lord, if a prisoner, and to help meet the expense of 
knighting the lord's eldest son and of the marriage of his eldest 
daughter. 

In the lack of an heir, a fief escheated to the lord ; and if the 
vassal's duties were neglected, it might come back to him by 
forfeiture, through a decree of his court. The lord also was the 
guardian of the widow and minor heirs of a vassal, and could 
dispose of a female ward in marriage. These powers were used 
often to extort money. Thus the English royal accounts con- 
tain various entries similar to the following one : " Hawissa, who 
was wife to William Fitz-Roberts, renders [to the king] 130 
marks and 4 palfreys, that she may have peace from Peter of 



A Baeon's Court. — From a sixteenth 
century woodcut. 



PRIVATE WARS 483 

Borough, to whom the king has given permission to marry her, 
and that she may not be compelled to marry." 

Feudal theory, then, paid elaborate regard to rights; but feudal Private 
practice was mainly a matter of force. There was no adequate 
machinery for obtaining justice : it was not easy to enforce 
the decisions of the crude courts against an offender who chose 
to resist. The whole noble class, too, thought war the most 
honorable and perhaps the most religious way to settle disputes. 
Like the trial by combat, it was considered an appeal to the 
judgment of God. Naturally, "private wars" between noble 
and noble became a chief evil of the age. They hindered the •' 

growth of industry, and commonly they hurt neutral parties 
quite as much as they hurt belligerents. There was little actual 
suffering by the warring nobles, and very little heroism. Indeed, 
there was little actual fighting. The weaker party usually 
shut itself up in its castle. The stronger side ravaged the 
villages in the neighborhood, driving off the cattle, and perhaps 
torturing the peasants for their small hidden treasures. In the 
eleventh century the church, unable to stop such strife, tried to 
regulate it by proclaiming the "Truce of God," forbidding 
private war between Wednesday evening and the following 
Monday and during the many church festivals. This truce, 
however, was not well" observed. 

Feudalism lasted 400 years and has left traces even in the The good 
Europe of to-day. It seems to us a vicious system, but it had ^ dalism 
some virtues of its own. The fief, large or small, became an ob- 
ject of love and devotion to its inhabitants — even to the most 
downtrodden. The lord was admired and almost worshiped by 
his people ; and in return, however harsh himself, he permitted no 
one else to injure or insult one of his dependents. An honorable 
noble, indeed, lived always under a stern sense of obligation to all 
the people subject to him. A rough paternalism ruled in society. 
Perhaps the system was more rough than paternal ; but it was 
better than anarchy. A passage from Joinville's Memoir of St. 
Louis illustrates this better side of the feudal relation — among 
the noble classes. Joinville was a great French noble of the 



484 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 



thirteenth century, about to set out on a crusade. At Easter- 
tide he summoned his vassals to his castle for a week of feasting 
and dancing in honor of his approaching departure : 

" And on the Friday I said to them : ' Sirs, I am going beyond sea and 
know not whether I shall ever return ; so draw near to me. If I 
have ever done you any wrong, I will redress it to one after another, 
as is my practice with all who have anything to ask of me.' And I 
made amends to them, according to the decisions of those dwelling on my 
lands; and, that I might not influence them, I withdrew from their de- 
liberations and carried out without dispute whatever they decided." 

Clergy and nobles, "praying class" and "fighting class," 
were fed and clothed by vastly larger numbers of "ignoble" 
workers, who were usually referred to only as other live stock 
might be mentioned. They had few rights and many duties. 

Each noble had to keep some land for the support of his own 
household and for other revenue. This "domain" land was 
cultivated by his serfs and villeins under the direction of his 
bailiff, or steward. The peasant workers did not live in scattered 
farmhouses, each on its own field : they were grouped in little 
villages of twenty or fifty homes, as in Europe to-day. Such a 
milage with its adjoining fields ivas a manor.''- 

Each manor had its church, at a little distance, and usually 
its manor house. This might be the lord's castle, on a hill 
above the other dwellings, or it might be a house only a trifle 
better than the homes of the villeins, to be used by the lord's 
steward. At one end of the village street stood the lord's 
smithy ; and near by, on some convenient stream, was the 
lord's mill. The smith and miller were usually serfs or villeins, 
and spent most of their labor on the land, but they were some- 
what better housed and more favored than the rest of their class. 

As in the last Roman days, the serf was bound to the soil by 
law : he could not leave it, but neither could he be sold apart 
from it. He had his own bit of ground to cultivate, at such 

> The most graphic treatments of peasant life are in Jessopp's Friars, 
87-112; Jenks' Edward Plantagenet, 46-52; and in Cheyney's Industrial 
and Social History, 31-52. Of the last, read especially 31-40 and 50-52. 



LIFE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE 485 

times as the lord's bailiff did not call him to labor on the lord's 
land. Usually the bailiff summoned the serfs in turn, each 
for two or for three days each week; but in harvest or haying 
he might keep them all busy, to the ruin of their own little 
crops. If the serf did get a crop, he had to pay a large part 
of it for the use of his land. He paid also a multitude of other 
dues and fines, — sometimes money, but almost always " in 
kind," — eggs, a goose, a cock, a calf, a portion of grain. 

The villein was a step higher. He was free in person. That 
is, he could leave his land and go from one lord to another; 
but he had to have some lord. The landless and masterless man 
was an outlaw, at the mercy of any lord. In profits from labor 
and in manner of life there was not much to choose between 
serf and villein ("villain"). 

The peasant homes (serfs' or villeins') were low, filthy, earth- Peasant 
floored, straw-thatched, one-room hovels of wood or sticks 
plastered together with mud. There was no chimney and 
usually no opening (no window) except the door. These homes 
straggled along either side of an irregular lane, where poultry, 
pigs, and children played together in the dirt. Behind each 
house was its weedy garden patch and its low stable and barn. 
These last were often under the same roof as the living room of 
the family. 

The house, small as it was, was not cluttered with furniture. 
A handmill for grinding meal, or at least a stone mortar in 
which to crush grain, a pot and kettle, possibly a feather bed, 
one or two rude benches, and a few tools for the peasant's work, 
made up the contents of even the well-to-do homes. 

Farming was very crude. The plowland was divided into Tillage in 
three great "fields." These were unfenced, and lay about the ^^g ^^e_ 
village at any convenient spots. One field was sown to wheat field system 
(in the fall) ; one to rye or barley (in the spring) ; and the third 
lay fallow, to recuperate. The next year this third field would 
be the wheat land, while the old wheat field would raise the 
barley, and so on. This primitive "rotation of crops" kept a 
third of the land idle. 



486 THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 

Every "field" was divided into a great number of narrow 
strips (cut on p. 447), each as nearly as possible a "furrow-long" 
(furlong), and one, two, or four rods wide, so that each contained 
from a quarter of an acre to an acre. Usually the strips were 
separated by " balks," or ridges of turf. A peasant's holding was 
about thirty acres, ten acres in each "field"; and his share in 
each lay not in one piece, but in fifteen or thirty scattered 
strips. The lord's land, probably half the whole, lay in strips 
like the rest. 

This kind of holding compelled a "common" cultivation. 
That is, each man must sow what his neighbor sowed ; and as 
a rule, each could sow, till, and harvest only when his neighbors 
did. Serfs were not intelligent or willing workers, and even 
the lord's stewards did not know how to get good returns from 
the land. Threefold the seed, or six bushels of wheat to the 
acre, was a good crop. 

Farm animals were small. The wooden plow required eight 
oxen, and then it did hardly more than scratch the surface of 
the ground. Carts were few and cumbrous. There was little or 
no cultivation of root foods. Potatoes, of course, were unknown. 
Sometimes a few turnips and cabbages and carrots, rather uneat- 
able varieties probably, were grown in garden plots behind the 
houses. Beer was brewed from the barley ; and well-to-do peas- 
ants had a hive of bees in the garden plot. Hoiley was the chief 
luxury of the poor. (Sugar was still unknown in Europe.) 

The most important crop was the wild hay, upon which the 
cattle had to be fed during the winter. Meadowland was 
twice as valuable as plowland. The meadow was fenced for 
the hay harvest, but was afterward thrown open for pasture. 
Usually there were other.. extensive pasture and wood lands, 
where lord and villagers fattened their cattle and swine. It 
was difficult to carry enough animals through the winter for 
the necessary farm work and breeding : so those to be used for 
food were killed in the fall and salted down ; and the large 
use of salt meat and the little variety in food caused loath- 
some diseases among the people. 



VILLAGE LIFE 



487 



Each village was a world by itself. Even the different 
villages of the same lord had little intercourse with one another. 
The lord's bailiff secured from some distant market the three 
outside products needed, — salt, millstones, and iron for the 
plowshares and for other tools. Except for this, a village was 
hardly touched by the great outside world — unless a war 
desolated it, or a royal procession chanced to pass through it. 
Commonly in the ninth century it had not even a shop. The 



A stupefy- 
ing shut-in 
life 




A Reaper's Cart Going Uphill. — After Jusserand's English Wayfaring 
Life; from a fourteenth century manuscript. The force of men and 
horses indicates the nature of the roads. The steepness of the hill is, 
of course, exaggerated, so as to fit the picture to the space in the 
manuscript. 

women of each household wove rough cloth for the single 
garment that covered them; and the men prepared leather 
for their own heavier clothing. 

This shut-in life seems to us stupefying and degrading, and 
often indescribably ferocious and indecent. Pictures in manu- 
scripts of the time, however, show that it had occasional fes- 
tivities ; and it was a great step up from the slavery of laborers 
in earlier times. 



The noble classes lived a life little more attractive to us. 
They dwelt in gloomy fortresses over dark dungeons where 



488 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 



prisoners rotted. They had fighting for business, and hunting 
with hound and hawk, and playing at fighting, for pleasures. 
The ladies busied themselves over tapestries and embroideries, 
in the chambers. Gay pages flitted through the halls, or played 
at chess in the deep windows, or at tennis in the castle " courts." 
And in the outer courtyard lounged gruff men-at-arms, ready 
with blind obedience to follow the lord of the castle on any 

foray or even in an 
attack upon their king. 
The favorite sport of 
this fighting age was a 
sort of mock battle 
called a tournament. 
Every student should 
know the splendid story 
of the combats in " the 
lists at Ashby" in 
Scott's Ivanhoe. The 
news of the coming 
event was carried far 
and near for weeks in 
advance. Knights be- 
gan to journey to the 
appointed place, per- 
haps from all parts of 
a kingdom, in groups 
that grew ever larger 
as the roads converged. 
Some came to win fame ; some to repair their fortunes, — since 
the knight who overthrew an opponent possessed his horse 
and armor and the ransom of his person, as in real war. The 
knightly cavalcade might be joined or followed by a motley 
throng journeying to the same destination ; among them, 
jugglers to win small coins by amusing the crowds, and 
traveling merchants with their wares on the backs of donkeys. 
There were few inns, but the mixed group of travelers found 




Peasants' May Dance. — From a miniature 
in the Bibliothfeque Nationale in Paris. The 
dress at least is idealized. 



LIFE IN THE CASTLE 



489 



ready welcome for meals and lodging at any manor house. 
The contests took place in a space (the " lists ") shut off 
from interference by palisades. The balconies, above, gay with 
streamers and floating scarfs, were crowded with ladies and 
nobles and perhaps with rich townsmen. Below, a mass of 
peasants and other common men jostled one another for the 
better chances to see the contestants. Sometimes two or more 
days were given to the combats. Part of the time, one group 




Falconry. — From a medieval manuscript reproduced by Lacroix. A 
falconer, to capture and train young hawks to bring game to the master, 
was among the most trusted under-officials of each castle. 



of knights " held the lists " against all comers, affording a series 
of single combats on horseback and on foot. Again, two mimic 
armies met in the melee. Perhaps even the yeomen were allowed 
to show their skill with bow and in wrestling. 

Population was thinly scattered, and large districts every- 
where were waste or forest. This gave admirable opportunity 
for hunting. The noble hunted indeed for food quite as much 
as for sport, and the castle folk did not often suffer for fresh 
meat. The game in forest and stream belonged to the lord 



The chase 

and 

falconry 



490 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 



of the manor. For a common man to kill deer or hare or wild 
duck or trout was to lose hand or eyes or life. 

Feasting filled a large part of the noble's life. Meals were 
served in the great hall of the castle, and were the social hours 
of the day. Tables were set out on movable trestles, and the 

household, visitors, and depend- 
ants gathered about them on 
seats and benches, with nice 
respect for precedence in rank, 
— the master and his noblest 
guests at the hea.(i, and the 
lowest servants toward the bot- 
tom of the long line. A profu- 
sion of food in many courses, 
especially at the midday "din- 
ner," was carried in from the 
kitchen across the open court- 
yard. Peacocks, swans, whole 
boars, or at least boar heads, 
were among the favorite roasts ; 
and huge venison "pies" were 
a common dish. Mother Goose's 
"four and twenty blackbirds" 
had real models in many a 
medieval pasty, which, when 
opened, let live birds escape, to 
be hunted down among the 
rafters of the hall by falcons. 
At each guest's place was a knife, to cut slices from the roasts 
within his reach, and a spoon for broths, but no fork or napkin 
or plate. Each one dipped his hand into the pasties, carrying 
the dripping food directly to his mouth. Loaves of bread were 
crumbed up and rolled between the hands to wipe off the surplus 
gravy, and then thrown to the dogs under the tables ; and be- 
tween courses, servants passed basins of water and towels. 
The food was washed down with huge draughts of wine, usually 




A CotTRT Fool. — After a medie- 
val miniature in brilliant colors. 
Many great lorda kept such 
jesters. 



CHIVALRY AND KNIGHTHOOD 



491 



Training 
as page 



diluted with water. Intervals between courses were filled with 
story-telling and song, and with rude jokes by the lord's " fool," 
or perhaps passing jugglers entertained the company. 

This grim life had its romantic and gentle side, indicated to Chivalry 
us by the name chivalry. The term at first meant the nobles 
on horseback (from the French cheval, horse), but it came to 
stand for the whole institution of "knighthood." There 
were two stages in the training of 
a young noble for knighthood. 

1. At about the age of seven he 
was sent from his own home into 
the household of his father's suze- 
rain, or of some other noble friend, 
to become a page. Here, for seven 
or eight years, with other boys, he 
waited on the lord and lady of the 
castle, serving them at table and 
running their errands. As soon 
as he was strong enough, he was 
trained dailj^^, by some old man- 
at-arms, in riding and in the use 

of light arms. But his attendance was paid chiefly to some lady 
of the castle, and by her, in return, he was 'taught obedience, 
courtesy, and a knight's duty to religion and to ladies. 

2. At fourteen or fifteen the page became a squire to the lord. 
Now he oversaw the care of his lord's horse and the cleaning of 
his shining armor ; he went with his lord to the hunt, armed him 
for battle, carried his shield, and accompanied him in the field, 
with special care for his safety. 

After five or six years of such service, at the age of twenty Knighthood 
or twenty-one, the squire's education was complete. He was 
now ready to become a knight. Admission to the order of 
knighthood was a matter of imposing ceremonial. The youth 
bathed (a symbol of purification), fasted, confessed his sins to 
a priest, and then spent the night in the chapel in prayer, 




Jugglers' Sword Dance. — 
From a thirteenth century 
manuscript. 



And squire 



492 



THE AGE OF FEUDALISM 



"watching" his arms. The next morning came solemn church 
services and a sermon upon the duties of a blameless knight. 
Then the household gathered in the castle yard, along with 
many visiting knights and ladies and their attendants. In the 
background of this gay scene a servant held a noble horse, 
soon to be the charger of the new knight. The candidate 
knelt before the lord of the castle, and there took the vows to 




The Exercise of the Quintain. — This shows an important part of 
the schooling of noble children. The boys ride, by turns, at the 
wooden figure- If the rider strikes the shield squarely in the center, 
it is well. If he hits only a glancing blow the wooden figure swings 
on its foot and whacks him with its club as he passes. 



be a brave and gentle knight, to defend the church, to protect 
ladies, to succor the distressed, especially widows and orphans. 
The ladies of the castle put his new armor upon him, gave him 
his sword, and buckled on a knight's golden spurs. Then the 
lord struck him lightly over the shoulder with the flat of the 
sword, exclaiming, " In the name of God, of St. Michael, and of 
St. George, I dub you knight." (This blow was the " accolade.") 
More honored still was the noble who had been dubbed 



THE IDEAL KNIGHT 493 

knight by some famous leader on the field of victory, for dis- 
tinguished bravery. 

Chivalry was an attempt to fuse the ideals of the Teutonic " The 
warrior and of the Christian. It has been called "the flower f°^^v° » 
of feudalism." Its faults were twofold. (1) It was exclusive. 
Its spirit was altogether a class spirit. It recognized no obli- 
gations except to nobles. Evcxi the vow to protect women 
did not apply to any women but those of gentle birth. (2) It 
carried some of its virtues (bravery and devotion to ladies) to 
such extremes as to make them fantastic, if not vicious. Still 
chivalry did help to soften manners and to humanize society. 
It elevated women, and it had much to do with creating the 
modern home and our idea of a gentleman. Toward the year 
1400, the English poet Chaucer gives this picture of his ideal 

knight : 

"A knight there was, and that a worthy man, 
That fro the time that he first began 
To riden out, he loved chivalry, 
Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy. . . . 
And tho that he was worthy, he was wise, 
And of his port as meek as is a maid. 
And never yet no villainy he said 
In all his life, unto no manner wight. 
He was a very perfect, gentle knight." 

For Further Reading. — Excellent "source" material may be 
found in Robinson's Readings or in Ogg's Source Book, and in Lanier's 
The Boy's Froissart. 

Historical fiction upon the feudal period is particularly valuable. 
Scott's novels, of course, must not be overlooked, although they give 
a false glamour to the age. They should be corrected by " Mark 
Twain's " Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court. Other excellent 
portraits are given in Robert Louis Stevenson's Black Arrow and Conan 
Doyle's White Company. Charlotte Yonge's Little Duke and Stock- 
ton's Story of Viteau are good for younger students and will be en- 
joyed by older ones. Martineau's Prince and Peasant pictures the 
abuses of feudalism at a later period. Students may be called upon to find 
incidents in such literature illustrating various paragraphs in this chapter. 

Exercise. — Explain the terms, — vassal, fief, commendation, 
homage, fealty. Let the class prepare lists of such terms for rapid 
and brief explanation. 



CHAPTER L 



THE CHURCH IN THE FEUDAL AGE 



Nowhere in the world to-day does any church fill so large a 
place, or wield so great authority, as the Catholic church did 
from the sixth century to the fifteenth. It was not only a 
religious organization : it was also a government. Its officers 
exercised many powers that have now been handed over to 
civil ^ officers. Public order depended upon it almost as com- 
pletely as did private morals. With its spiritual thunders and 
the threat of its curse, it protected the widow and orphan from 
the brutal barons who had respect for no earthly power. For 
seven hundred years after Charlemagne's Empire broke up, 
the church was the only bond that held the Western world 
together in a sense of unity. Nations were not yet made. 
Not Britain or France or Germany, but " Christendom," was the 
true fatherland to which men gave their love and patriotism. 

Penance and absolution played an especially important part 
in human life. In ordaining a priest, the bishop said to him 
" Whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven him ; whose- 
soever sins ye retain, they are retained." A man who had fallen 
into sin, then, according to the church's teaching, could escape 
only through a priest's absolution. Before the priest could 
absolve from sin he must hear the confession of the sinner, and 
be convinced of his sincere repentance. Then his absolution 
freed the soul from danger of punishment in hell, — but, to 
escape the fires of purgatory, it was still needful for the offender 
to do "penance." The priest might order the offender, accord- 
ing to the sin, to repeat many prayers, or to keep fasts, short 
or long, or to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of some saint, 

1 Civil is used very commonly in contrast to ecclesiastical. 
494 



THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 495 

or even to the Holy Land. Or, in place of these penalties, the 
absolved sinner might be permitted to give money to the church 
for its work. 

The worship of the church remained generally in Latin, — The Mass 
the language in universal use in Western Europe when the 
services took their form. The chief place in the service was held 
by the Mass. All men believed that the bread and wine, when 
consecrated by the priest, were transformed into the very sub- 
stance of the body and blood of Christ. Hence the term Tran- 
suhstantiation, which came later into use to signify this miracu- 
lous change. The Mass, it was thought, could purify not 
only those who were present at the sacrament but even those 
who were suffering in purgatory. So rich men often left large 
sums to the church to pay for Masses for their souls after death, 
and many gifts were made in like manner for Masses for the 
souls of departed friends. 

As early as the fourth century, most of the great religious 
festivals, such as Christmas and Easter, had come to he celebrated 
much as in the present day. The splendor of the religious cele- 
bration, and the joyousness of the social side of such festivals, 
were high lights amid the gloom and savagery of the dark 
centuries. Preaching was usually in the language of the people. The 
It played a smaller part in the church's work than to-day, but of^j^^^g 
there was no time when it was not a mighty instrument for good. 
The following extract from a sermon by the good Bishop, St. 
Eloy, in the seventh century, is typical in the force with which 
it insists on man's duties to his fellowmen as well as to God. 

"It is not enough, most dearly beloved, for you to have received 

the name of Christians if you do not do Christian works 

love your neighbors as yourselves ; what you would desire to be done 
to you by others, that do you to others ; what you would not have 
done to you, do to no one ; before all things have charity, for charity 
covereth a multitude of sins ; be hospitable, humble, casting your 
care upon God, for he careth for you ; visit the sick ; seek out the 
captives ; receive strangers ; feed the hungry ; clothe the naked ; set 
at naught soothsayers and magicians ; let your weights and measures 
he fair, your balance just, your bushel and your 'pint honest. . . ." 



496 



THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 



We have already described the early growth of the church 
organization (p. 422). Now we are to look at it as it stood 
when it had won Western Europe. 

1. All Christendom was made up of parishes. The parish 
was the smallest church unit. Commonly it was a manor; 
but, as towns grew up, each was divided into a suitable number 
of parishes. At the head of a parish was a priest, who, in large 
city parishes, was assisted by deacons. 

2. A group of parishes made up the diocese of a bishop. 
Nearly every town of any consequence in the twelfth century 
was a bishop's seat ("city"), and its " cathedral " was far more 
magnificent than the smaller parish churches. The bishop was 
the mainspring in church government. He was revered as a 
successor of the Apostles, and he was subject only to the guid- 
ance of the pope — who was successor to the chief of the Apos- 
tles. Originally, the bishop's special duty had been to oversee 
the parish priests. But, with the growth of the church, he had 
come to have other functions. He was a great feudal lord, 
owing military service to one or more suzerains, and holding 
temporal power over many vassals. He had charge of the 
extensive church property in the diocese. His agents collected 
the "tithes" (the tenth of all produce) and distributed to each 
parish church its share. And he looked after the enforcement of 
the laws of the church. This "canon law" had grown into a 
complex system. To administer justice under it, each bishop 
held a court, made up of trained churchmen, over which he 
presided. This court had jurisdiction not merely over ecclesias- 
tical matters : it tried any case that involved a clergyman — 
or any one else who was under the special protection of the church. 

To help in all these duties, the bishop had a body of assistant 
clergy, called canons. On his death this "cathedral chapter" 
appointed his successor, — subject perhaps to the approval of 
some temporal ruler and certainly to that of the pope. 

3. A number of dioceses made up a province, — which was 
usually one of the old divisions of that name under the Roman 
Empire. Over each province, seated in its most important 



PRIEST, BISHOP, ARCHBISHOP, POPE 497 

city, was an archbishop, or mctroj^olitan. The archbishop was a 
bishop also of one diocese, and he had a general supervision 
over the other bishops of the province. His courts, too, heard 
appeals from theirs. 

4. At the head of all this church hierarchy stood the yope, the Christen- 
spiritual monarch of Christendom. He was supreme lawgiver, "°°^ *°*^ 
supreme judge, supreme executive. He issued new laws in the 

form of hulls (so-called from the gold seal, or bulla, on the docu- 
ments), and he set aside old laws by his dispensations, — as 
when it seemed best to him to permit cousins to marry (a thing 
forbidden by the canon law) . His court heard appeals from the 
courts of bishop and archbishop, and likewise from many of 
the temporal courts of Christendom. Now and then he set 
aside appointments of bishops and other clergy, and himself 
filled the vacancies. At times he also sent legates into different 
lands to represent his authority directly. A legate could revoke 
the judgment of a bishop's court, remove bishops, and haughtily 
command obedience from kings, — quite as Shakspere pictures 
in King John. For help and counsel, the pope gathered about 
him a " college " {collection) of cardinals. At first this body was 
made up of the bishops of Rome and its vicinity ; but it grew 
to include great churchmen from all Christian lands. 

There was also a papal system of taxation extending over all Peter's 
Christendom, long before any king had an effective revenue ^®°*^® 
system. The most famous element in this taxation was Peter's 
Pence, or a penny for each hearth each year, collected over 
Western Europe by papal officers. Much more important, 
however, were the many enormous payments made by the 
clergy, — such as the payment by each bishop, at his accession, 
of half the first year's revenue of his office, — a payment corre- 
sponding to a feudal relief. 

5. Bishop, archbishop, and pope could each call councils of Church 
inferior clergy. The local councils dealt, of course, with local '^°"'^*^"^ 
concerns. A general council, made up of all bishops in Latin 
Christendom, settled supreme matters of faith and of church 



498 



THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 



policy. Such an assembly was believed to be divinely inspired 
in its decisions. The first general council was the one Cons tan- 
tine called at Nicaea (p. 423) ; and at some other times emperors 
as well as popes summoned these gatherings. 

To compel obedience, bishops and pope had two mighty 
weapons — excommunication and interdict. Excommunication 
shut the offender out from all religious communion. He could 
attend no church service, receive no sacrament, and at death, 
if still unforgiven, his body could not receive Christian burial. 
In modern language, excommunication was also a universal 
boycott for all social and business relations. If it was obeyed 
by the community, it cut a man off absolutely from all commu- 
nication with his fellows, and practically made him an outlaw. 
No one might speak to him or give him food or shelter, under 
danger of similar penalty, and his very presence was shunned 
like the pestilence. One decree of excommunication reads : 

" By virtue of the divine authority given to bishops by St. Peter we 
cast him out from the bosom of our Holy Mother Church, Let him 
be accursed in his town, accursed in his field, accursed in his home. Let 
no Christian speak to him or eat with him. Let no priest say mass for 
him, or give him the communion. Let him be buried Uke the ass." 

What excommunication was to the individual, the interdict 
was to a district or a nation. Churches were closed, and no 
religious ceremonies were permitted, except the rites of baptism 
and of extreme unction. No marriage could be performed, and 
there could be no burial in consecrated ground. "The dead 
were left unburied, and the living were unblessed." 



Thus Christendom was divided into provinces, dioceses, and 
parishes, ruled by pope, archbishops, bishops, and priests. Be- 
sides these, there were the thousands of monasteries (p. 448) 
that dotted Europe, with their multitudes of monks, ruled by 
priors and abbots, subject to the final authority of the pope. 
This vast centralized monarchy had its laws, legislatures, and 
judges, its taxes, its terrible punishments, and its promise of 
eternal happiness. 



THE DEMOCRATIC SIDE 



499 



And yet this government was vastly more democratic than 
feudal society was. Men of humblest birth rose sometimes to 
its loftiest offices. Gregory VII, who set his foot upon the neck 
of the mightiest king in Europe, was the son of a poor peasant. 
Another pope was a shepherd's son; another, a baker's; and 
many a great bishop had even a lowlier origin. The church 
in the Middle Ages was the only part of society where talent and 
study could lift a ■poor hoy 
to power — and so it was 
recruited by the best 
minds. 

Of all the mighty or- 
ganization, the village 
priest brought the church 
closest home to the mass 
of the people. The great 
ecclesiastics — bishops, 
archbishops, and abbots — 
were always part of the 
aristocracy. But the rural 
priest was commonly a 
peasant by birth, and he 
often remained essentially 
a peasant in his life, — 
marrying in the village 
(until the eleventh cen- 
tury) and working in the fields with his neighbors. He was 
a peasant with a somewhat better income than his fellows, 
with a little learning, a revered position, and with great power 
for good. He christened, absolved, married, and buried his 
parishioners, comforted the heart-sore and wretched, and taught 
all, by word and example, to hold fast to right living. He 
looked, too, to their physical welfare. It was as much his duty 
to guard the village against a leper as against a heretic. 

The church building was the social center of the parish. Near it, 
on Sunday, between the sacred services, the people found their 




500 THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH 

chief recreation in sports and games ; and from its steps the 
priest gave to them what news they received from the outside 
world, reading aloud there, too, any rare letter that some 
adventurous wanderer might be able to get written to his home. 

The right of the clergy to be tried in clerical courts was 
known as " benefit of clergy." The practice had its good side. 
Ordinary courts and ordinary law partook of the violent and 
ferocious life of the age. Trials were rude ; and ghastly punish- 
ments were inflicted for trivial offenses, — often, no doubt, 
upon the innocent. It was a gain when the peaceful and moral 
part of society secured the right to trial in more intelligent 
courts and by more civilized codes. 

But the church law was too mild to deal with serious crimes. 
It did not use force in its punishments, but only required the 
offender to punish himself by penances of various kinds or by 
fines, or payments to the church. This mildness was seriously 
abused. Its advantages tempted men to "take Holy Orders" 
(enter the clergy) until, besides the preaching clergy and the 
monks, the land swarmed with "clerics" who were really only 
lawyers, secretaries, scholars, teachers, or mere adventurers. 
Some of these, by their crimes, brought disgrace upon the 
church and danger to the state. 

For Further Reading. — Cutts' Parish Priests and their People 
(ch. ix) and Gasquet's Parish Life in Medieval England (ch. iv) give 
admirable descriptions of the way in which the medieval church af- 
fected the life of the common people. 



CHAPTER LI 



ENGLAND IN THE FEUDAL AGE 



The splendid story of England for the thousand years from 
Alfred the Great to the present day is also, most of it, the story 
of the foundations of American liberty. And so, even in this 
brief "survey," that story is told more fully than other topics 
are. 

A century after Alfred, England for a time became a subject 
province of Denmark — which, under Knut the Great, was the 
head of a mighty Christian Scandinavian Empire. But in 1042 
the English regained independence, and then a national folk- 
moot (the Witan, or "Wise Men") chose for king a prince of 
Alfred's line, known in history, because of his piety, as Edward 
the Confessor. 

Edward was the son of a Norman princess, and had spent his 
exiled youth in Normandy (p. 470), then one of the most popu- 
lous and prosperous parts of Europe. The Norman nobles had 
taken on French customs, adopted the French language, and 
were now to spread their new civilization into other lands. 
Edward brought swarms of Norman favorites to England and 
began to introduce Norman customs there — much to the dis- 
gust of his English subjects. He left no son ; and at his death 
the English Witan chose Harold, the most powerful Saxon 
nobleman, for their king. 

" Harold, the Last of the Saxons," ^ is a gallant figure. Eng- 
land was threatened from two sides. Harold's turbulent and 
tyrannical brother, Tostig, Earl of Northumbria, had been 
driven into exile by a popular rising. Harold, standing firm 



Danish 
rule 



And 

Norman 

influence 



Harold of 
England 



1 This is the title of Bulwer's novel, which all students should know. 
Charles Kingsley's Hereward describes another side of the Conquest. 

501 



502 



ENGLAND IN THE FEUDAL AGE 



for justice, had refused to restore him. So Tostig had stirred 
up Harold Hardrada, the adventurous king of Norway and one 
of the most romantic heroes in history, to attack England on 
the east; while William of Normandy, claiming the throne 
flimsily on the ground of a promise from Edward, prepared to 
invade from the south. For months, Harold of England 
watched anxiously the two storm clouds, holding fleet and army 
ready to meet either onset. But in September his array, — 
mainly a farmer militia, — dispersed for the harvest ; and at 
once the two storms burst. 

The Norwegian host landed first, on the coast of Yorkshire. 
Hurrying northward with his trusty household troops, English 

Harold overthrew and 
slew Norwegian Harold 
in a desperate and bril- 
liant battle at Stamford 
Bridge. But meantime 
William had made his 
landing on the south 
coast. Back hastened 
the English king, by 
forced marches, with his 
thinned and exhausted 
troops, while the jealous 
nobles of the old Danelaw foolishly and treacherously held 
aloof. The gentlemen and husbandmen of Kent and Wessex 
rallied nobly to his banner; but they made only a poorly 
armed, rustic force, with which to meet the steelclad Norman 
knights. 

William was ravaging cruelly, to support his host and to draw 
Harold to an attack. But the English king wisely seized the 
hill of Senlac, commanding William's position, and intrenched 
his troops there by palisades ; so that the invader, unable to 
forage further, was forced to risk an attack on Harold's terms. 
This brought on the battle of Hastings, or Senlac, one of the 
world's decisive struggles. A long day the battle raged between 




NoBMAN William's Ship- — From the 
Bayeux Tapestry (see cut, p. 503). 



THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS 503 

two civilizations. The English strength lay in the mail-clad Saxon 
family guards of the king massed about his standard, the Golden Gorman 
Dragon of Wessex. They wielded huge, two-handed battle horse 
axes, and fought on foot, shoulder to shoulder, the king among 
them, behind a wall of overlapping long shields. This was a ... 
splendid force to resist attach. The Norman strength lay in their 




Battle of Hastings. — From the Bayeux Tapestry. The Bayeux 
Tapestry is a linen band 230 feet long and 20 inches wide, embroidered 
in colored worsteds, with 72 scenes illustrating the Norman Conquest. 
It was a contemporary work. The scene given here pertains to the 
close of the battle. 

mounted knights and men-at-arms, assisted by bowmen, — 
magnificent troops to make an onset. For the last time for cen- 
turies, footmen met knights on equal terms. 

Charge after charge of Norman horse failed to break the 
Saxon shield-wall. William's furious valor and personal 
strength, which had already won him fame on many a bloody 
field as the most terrible knight in Christendom, showed as 
never before, mingled with cool generalship and quick re- 
sourcefulness. Three times a horse was killed under him. 
Once his troops broke, and the cry went up, — " The Duke is 
slain." William tore off his helmet, to show his face, shout- 
ing with mighty voice, — "I live ; and by God's help I shall 



504 



ENGLAND IN THE FEUDAL AGE 



conquer!" And a blow from his mace struck down one of 
Harold's brothers at the foot of the English standard. 

Finally, at three in the afternoon, by feigning flight, William 
drew part of the English troops from their impregnable posi- 
tion, in spite of Harold's efforts, and then, turning savagely upon 
their disordered ranks, he rode them down in masses. Still the 
household troops stood firm about the king, and at six the fight 
swayed back and forth as stubbornly as ever about the Dragon 
standard. But the Duke brought his archers to the front, to 
pour their deadly shafts into the massed Saxon array ; and, as 
the sun went down, an arrow pierced Harold's eye. The com- 
bat closed in the gathering dusk, with the slaughter of his fol- 
lowers over his corpse. 

This Norman Conquest is a turning point in English (and 
American) history. But the old Saxon institutions concerned 
with local government are part of our inheritance. Long be- 
fore the Conquest, the Saxons had learned to manage many 
matters of common interest at their own doors — in village 
moots and in the "courts" of larger units known as hundreds 
and shires. 

1. True, after 900 a.d. an irregular Saxon feudalism had been 
growing up, and the ordinary township had come to have little 
self-government. Such powers as it had once possessed had 
passed mainly into the hands of some neighboring noble, to 
whom the village was coming to stand much like a "manor" 
on the Continent. But, at the worst, a manor had a "court" 
every three or four weeks. The lord's steward presided, with 
great power of control ; but all heads of families took part, and 
especially had voice in declaring "the custom of the manor," 
— a thing that varied from manor to manor, and corresponded 
to town ordinances of to-day. 

2. The hundred was the busiest unit for carrying on local 
government. (It was a collection of villages, probably set off 
originally in an old tribal kingdom as a military unit. The 
name survives to-day in Maryland for local divisions.) The 
hundred court met once a month, and was made up of the 



SAXON LOCAL GOVERNMENT 



505 



landlords, or their stewards, and the "reeve" (headman), 
priest, and "four best men," of each village. It settled disputes 
about land and other property, and tried criminal cases. 

3. The shire (the later county) was originally a survival of an 
old tribal kingdom. In the end England came to contain some 
forty such units. The shire court met twice a year, presided 
over by its sheriff (shire-reeve) and bishop. It was composed 
much as the courts of the hundreds were, except that it was 
larger. It tried appeals from the hundred courts,, and decided 
many matters of local government.^ 

4. The chief village of each shire had usually grown into a 
fortified borough, a trading town, with some special privileges 
of self-government granted by the kings. Trade had raised 
some other villages, too, into boroughs. 

Shire and hundred, like the township, had been coming more 
and more under the control of neighboring lords, and sometimes 
those lords had set up their own private courts alongside the 
people's courts. Still it was in these self-governing courts of the 
shire and hundred that the old Teutonic freedom best survived. 
It was these institutions, too, which were to prove the cradle of 
later English liberty. 

The Normans did not meddle much with these local insti- 
tutions. They did build up a more effective central govern- 
ment through the establishment of a new sort of feudalism. 
Feudalism was already fully developed in Normandy. William 
introduced it into England as a complete system, but with 
certain changes which freed it from its worst evils — so far as 
government is concerned. 

(1) No one lord was permitted to accumulate such vast 
possessions as were often held by single barons in France and 
Germany. (2) The properties that the great lords did hold 
were scattered in different counties, so that each piece really 
became a surety for the lord's fidelity. (3) The chief authority 



And the 
germ of 
represent- 
ative 
government 



Norman 
centrali- 
zation 



A new 
feudalism 
without 
decentrali- 
zation 



1 "Court" in medieval history has a more extended meaning than in 
recent times. A "court" was concerned with any or all matters of govern- 
ment, — not merely with judicial business. (,Cf. p. 482.) 



506 



ENGLAND UNDER NORMAN KINGS 



in a shire was now exercised, not by an hereditary nobleman, 
but by the king's sheriff (shire-reeve). (4) Vassals of every 
degree were required to swear fidelity directly to the king, so that 
they owed him allegiance even against their own immediate lords. 

Until 1066, England had counted for little in the life of Europe. 
Its church had become almost independent of Rome, and in 
politics its foreign relations had been mainly with the Scandina- 
vian countries. At home, from the time of Alfred the Great, 
the two chief dangers had been the growth of anarchy and the 
splitting apart of Danish England and Saxon England. 

The Norman Conquest brought the church again into de- 
pendence on Rome,i and drew England into the thick of Euro- 
pean politics.^ Within the island, it crushed together north 
and south, so that the two parts never again dreamed of separa- 
tion, and it built up a strong central government. To the old 
spirit of Saxon freedom, the Normans added a new genius for 
organization. The local institutions to a considerable degree 
remained Saxon, but the central government owed its efficiency 
to Norman influences. The kings were strong enough to keep 
down feudal tyrants, but not quite strong enough to become 
royal tyrants themselves. This was mainly because, through 
dread of royal power, Norman nobles and Saxon people drew 
together quickly into an English nation (the first true nation in 
Europe). Then, in centuries of slow, quiet, determined progress, 
this new nation won constitutional liberty. 

" Lance and torch and tumult, steel and gray-goose wing. 
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king." 

^ The pope had blessed the enterprise and had sent Duke William a 
consecrated banner. (This is the banner in the stern of WiUiam's ship, in 
the illustration on page 502.) Afterward, Pope Gregory VII demanded 
that William do homage to him for his realm. William haughtily refused. 
He filled the high places in the church with Normans in sympathy with 
Rome, but he guarded jealously against papal interference in his govern- 
ment. He forbade the clergy to place any of his knights under excom- 
munication without consulting him ; he declared any one an outlaw who 
should carry an appeal to Rome without royal permission ; and no papal 
letter could be received in England without his sanction. 

^ For some generations the rulers of England were also dukes of Nor- 
mandy, and so great vassals of the French crown. 



WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 507 

And not merely by fighting in the field was this liberty 
won, but, even more, by countless unrecorded martyrdoms of 
heroic and often nameless men, on the scaffold, in the dun- 
geon, or, harder still, in broken lives and ruined homes. At a 
great price did Englishmen work out, first of all peoples 
for a large territory, the union of a strong central government 
and of free institutions. 

The Conquest also brought in new blood, a higher culture, 
and new elements in language. Norman lords and clergy, and 
likewise Norman merchants, architects, and artisans, flocked 
into England. All these people spoke their own Norman- 
French tongue, and for a time only the lowest classes spoke 
English. Gradually, the English gained its place as the lan- 
guage of the whole people ; but meantime it lost its more com- 
plicated grammatical forms and was enriched by a multitude 
of Norman words. 

William the Conqueror was king by right of the sword; but William I, 
he went through the form of an election by an English Witan, 1000-1087 
and he ruled with much regard for English custom. Some 
of his chief work has been described. Among his other wise 
deeds was the taking of a great census to find out the resources 
of the kingdom and the dues payable to the king. This survey 
is recorded in Domesday Book, and gives us more exact knowl- 
edge about England than we have of any other country in 
that century. The population numbered some 1,200,000. 
One tenth of these are called "burgesses" ("inhabitants of 
"boroughs"), though half of them dwelt in what we should call 
mere villages. The king's feudal army contained about 5000 
knights. 

In the Conqueror's makeup there mingled strangely the wild 
passions of his barbaric Norse ancestors and the shrewd caution 
of a modern statesman. His person was gigantic, his strength 
enormous, his will knew no pity, and his outbursts of anger 
made his closest counselors tremble. "Starkman he was, and 
great awe men had of him," says the English chronicler of the 



508 



ENGLAND UNDER NORMAN KINGS 



period ; " so harsh and cruel, that no man dared withstand his 
will." But the same conquered English writer fails not to praise 
the "good peace" William's stern pitilessness made, "so that a 
man might fare over his realm with a bosom full of gold." And. 
he tells us, too, how the lonely, grim king grew gentle in the 
woods and "loved the red deer as though he were their father." 
There were three more "Norman kings." William, by will, 
left Normandy to his eldest son Robert, and England to his 

second son William Rufus 
(the Red). This prince, 
to strengthen his claim, 
procured an election from 
an English Assembly, but 
he proved unscrupulous, 
and is remembered as a 
tyrant. 

He was succeeded by 
his brother, Henry I, the 
youngest son of the con- 
queror. Henry had been 
born in England and he 
married an English prin- 
cess. He, also, secured 
an election, and in return 
he granted to the people 
of England a Charter of 
Liberties, which a hundred years later was to become the 
model for a more important grant. 

The English nobles promised Henry to make his daughter 
Matilda his successor ; but, after his death, his nephew Stephen 
secured an election. Stephen was weak, and his rule was dis- 
tracted by civil war with the supporters of Matilda. His 
reign is the darkest period in English history after the Conquest, 
Feudal anarchy seemed at last to have seized upon the land. 
The contemporary chroniclers exclaim upon the misery of the 
age with bitter phrases : 




Norman Doorway, St. Peter's, North- 
ampton. — Note the massive round arch 
and the simple but effective ornament. 



HENRY PLANTAGENET 509 

" Every powerful man made his castles, and when they were built 
they filled them with devils and evil men ; they put men in their dun- 
geons for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeak- 
able . . . men died of hunger, for the earth bare no corn . . . and it 
was commonly said that Christ and his saints slept. ... In those 
days, if three or four men came riding towards a township, all the town- 
ship fled hastily, believing them to be robbers. ... That lasted the 
nineteen winters Stephen was king." 

Matilda had married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, a province of Henry n, 
France. Geoffrey commonly wore in his cap a sprig of the ^^S4-ii 9 
broom plant {planta genesta), and this pleasing habit gave to 
his family the surname, Plantagenet. On the death of Stephen, 
the son of this marriage became Henry II of England, the first 
of a long line of Plantagenet kings. 

Henry's stout body and broad shoulders rose from bowed 
legs, and were topped by a bull neck and a round head with 
fiery face and bulging eyes. He wore his hair cropped close, 
among the long-haired nobles of the court, and was careless in 
dress, rough and hurried in manner, and exceedingly sparing in 
food and drink. He had a memory that forgot no detail of 
business, a strong will that held steadfastl;>i to his plans, and 
great physical strength which enabled him to keep tirelessly at 
his tasks while servants and attendants dropped with weariness. 
He was the hardest worker of his day. Said one observer, — 
"He never sits down"; and it was remarked that in travel 
(on horseback, over the bad roads of the time) he was fond 
of crowding two days' journey into one. 

Henry was the most powerful ruler in Europe. England Henry's 
was only a part of his territories. Through his mother he had r^**™^ 
inherited the dukedoms of Normandy, Maine, and Brittany. England 
Through his father, he was Count of Anjou and Touraine. By 
marriage with Eleanor, divorced wife of Louis VII of France, 
he had obtained Aquitaine, which then included also Poitou 
and Gascony. Thus he ruled more than half of what is now 
France — and six times as much French territory as the French 
king in that day ruled. (See map after page 522.) 

True, Heriry held these French provinces, in name, as a 



510 



ENGLAND UNDER HENRY II 



vassal of the king of France, and he was constantly entangled 
in warfare with his suzerain. Out of his thirty-five years of 
kingship, only about a third were spent in England ; and these, 
a few months at a time. He thought of himself chiefly as a 
French prince with important possessions in the neighboring 
island. None the less, he proved one of the greatest and most 
beneficent of all the English kings. ^ 

The first task of the new king was to restore order. He 
drove out or hunted down the swarms of foreign mercenaries 
that had been ravaging the country during the long civil wars, 
and demolished ruthlessly the new castles which had risen in 
Stephen's time ■ — in spite of the grumbling and the black looks 
of the great nobles, and some trifling rebellions. He also 
decreased permanently the military importance of the feudal 
lords by two measures. 

1. A law known as the Assize of Arms revived the old national 
militia. Every freeman (below the rank of the vassals who held 
their land by military service) was ordered to provide himself 
with weapons and armor, and to hold himself always ready for 
service at the summons of the royal sheriff. 

2. The subvassals of the great lords were excused from military 
service on condition of a money payment to the Icing. This sum 
was called scutage ("shield money"). With this fund the 
king could hire trained professional soldiers, more reliable and 
effective than the unwieldy feudal armies. The great nobles 
were no longer followed to the field by such numerous bodies of 
knights as formerly. The knights, too, turned their attention 
in part away from fighting, and became more and more inter- 
ested in farming their lands and in the business of the shire 
courts, — so that we begin soon to speak of them as " knights 
of the shire." 

Henry tried next to check the authority of the church. All 



1 Before his death, Henry had still other possessions. He began the 
English conquest of Ireland. For a time, he held Scotland in imperfect 
subjection, her king his imprisoned vassal. And the conquest of Wales 
went on slowly but steadily, as in every strong English reign. 



HENRY AND BECKET 511 

"clerics," or "clerks," were exempt from the jurisdiction of 
the ordinary courts (p. 500). Henry was resolute to make all 
men, lay or cleric, equal before the law. As a step to his pur- 
pose, he secured the archbishopric of Canterbury (the highest 
ecclesiastical office in England) for his trusted counselor, Thomas 
Becket. This appointment proved the greatest error in Henry's 
life. Thomas had been his friend as well as his chief minister, Thomas 
— a gay companion at the feast or in the hunt, and a gallant •°®'^^^' 
follower in the French campaigns. Henry had heaped riches 
and offices upon him. But in this new position, Thomas became 
a changed man. He renounced all luxury and gayety, and 
wore at all times next his body a coarse hair shirt, like the 
meanest penitent ; and he took up enthusiastically the cause of 
the church against the king. 

To settle this dispute, a " Great Council" of lords and bishops " Constitu- 
was gathered at Clarendon. This Assembly drew up a long code Ji°°^ °^ , 
to regulate the relations of church and state. This body of 
laws reenacted the rules for the church proclaimed bj^ William 
the Conqueror (p. 506), and went on to make good the claim of 
Henry about jurisdiction. The royal courts were to decide, 
in the first place, whether a suit belonged in the church courts 
or not ; church courts were to hold trials only in the presence of 
roj^al officers ; and a convicted clerk was to pass to the ordinary 
covirts for punishment. 

Thomas refused assent. His personal enemies took advan- 
tage of the king's wrath against him to try to ruin him by 
trumped-up suits in the king's court. Thomas appeared there, 
cross in hand, haughtily refused to plead, and appealed to 
the pope for judgment, — in defiance of the Constitutions of 
Clarendon. Shouts of "Traitor!" drove him from the room; 
and that night he fled from the realm in disguise, leaving 
Henry for a time victorious. 

The most important of Henry's reforms had to do with the Judicial 
administration of justice. To improve this was the great need ^^^°^^^ 
of the Middle Ages. In theory, anywhere in Europe, the king 
was "the fountain of justice," and could set aside the decision 



512 ENGLAI^D UNDER HENRY II 

of other courts so as to do justice. But in practice it was ex- 
ceedingly hard for the man who was suffering injustice to get 
at the king. The king's court had been practically a feudal 
court for the king and his great vassals ; and the majority of 
Englishmen sought justice still in the courts of hundred and 
shire, or in the local feudal courts that were rising alongside 
these popular courts. 

If this condition had continued longer, each district in Eng- 
land would have developed its own local customs, and national 
uniformity would have become almost impossible. Henry saw 
the need of one law for all England. He opened the doors of 
the royal courts to all. In particular, he undermined the feudal 
courts by ordering that any free landholder in danger of being 
dispossessed of his land unjustly by his lord might find pro- 
tection in the king's courts. 

But Henry did more than issue an empty invitation for all 
Englishmen to come to the king's justice. He sent the king's 
justice out through the realm to the doors of all Englishmen. Early 
in his reign, he had sent out judges from his court, from time to 
time, to visit different shires. The primary duty of these visiting 
judges had been to watch the sheriffs, and see to the just col- 
lection of royal dues. But, incidentally, they were empowered 
to represent the king by doing justice wherever any man ap- 
pealed to them, — even from the local court of a great lord. 

Before his death, Henry extended and systematized this 
method. England was divided into six districts, and three 
judges from the king's court were sent to journey through 
each district, to hold court in every shire each year at a stated 
time. These were circuit or itinerant judges. Thus the cus- 
toms of the king's court became common law for all England, 
— the "Common Law," which is to-day the basis of English 
and American justice. 

Alongside trial by ordeal and by combat, Henry's laws also 
introduced trial by jury. It had been a custom of the Prank- 
ish kings sometimes to bring together a number of old men 
in a given district, to give witness in disputes that concerned 



COURTS AND JURIES 



513 



the ancient customs of the region. The Normans brought 
this form of "inquest" to England. The Conqueror's officers 
used it in compiling Domesday Book ; and the ignorance of 
the Norman rulers as to the customs of the land gave frequent 
occasion to employ it. So far, however, the sworn ^ body of 
witnesses had been used only to settle matters in which the king 
was interested. Henry extended the same method to questions 
of property ("civil" cases) between 'private persons. 

Henry gave us likewise the beginning of our "grand jury." The jury of 
Many offenders were too powerful for any one person to dare '""i"®^ 
accuse. Henry provided that in each county, at regular inter- 
vals, a jury should be called together to "present" suspected 
criminals to the king's circuit judges for trial. 

For some time longer, suspects presented by such a grand Jury trial 
jury were tried by ordeal or by combat. But in 1215 a great ^°^ cnminal 

C3.S6S 

Church Council, representing all Western Christendom, con- 
demned the ordeal as a method of trial ; and then it became 
the custom in England to summon another smaller jury {petit 
jury) to try the man whom the larger jury {grand jury) had 
accused. That is, jury trial, which Henry II had introduced 
for civil cases, became the custom for criminal cases also. 

The accused still had the right to claim trial by combat. 
The noble classes commonly did so, for some generations, 
and the right was not legally abolished until 1819. For a 
long time the trial jury were witnesses as well as judges of 
the testimony. They were allowed, however, to call in 
other witnesses ; and gradually a line was drawn between 
them and these others, until finally it became the rule that 
the "jurymen" should come without any knowledge of their 
own regarding the case, so as to hear and judge impartially 
the evidence submitted by the witnesses. 



Part of his work Henry saw undone. Thomas Becket, from 
his refuge abroad, did not cease to thunder against the king 

1 "Juror" means a man who has been "sworn." 



514 



ENGLAND UNDER HENRY II 



and all his officers ; and finally the pope took up Becket's cause 
in earnest. Henry was forced to receive Thomas back to his 
archbishopric, in a pretended reconciliation. But the quarrel 
soon broke out as bitter as ever ; and, stirred by angry words 
of the king, four knights brutally murdered the archbishop. 

This foul deed made Becket a holy martyr for the church in 
the eyes of the people. For a time Henry was deserted on all 
sides ; and he was compelled to make his peace with the pope 
by surrendering the Constitutions of Clarendon. 

These troubles only foreshadowed the deeper sorrows and 
humiliation of the king's closing days. Two sons, both rebels 
against him repeatedly, had died before him. But Philip II 
of France, who had stirred them to treason, now intrigued 
ceaselessly with the remaining sons, Richard and John. Broken 
in health, Henry was vainly seeking reconciliation, when Richard 
and the French king suddenly appeared in battle array, driv- 
ing him in headlong flight from his favorite French capital, 
which they laid in ashes. Hunted from town to town, the dying 
king was driven to beg for mercy. As a condition of peace, a 
list of conspirators against him, whom he was required to pardon, 
was handed him. At the head stood the name of John, his 
favorite son. Indeed, it had been Henry's partiality for John 
that had driven Richard into arms against him. John's 
name in the list of traitors was the last blow. "Now," said 
Henry, turning his face to the wall, " I care no more for myself 
or the world." And he passed away, muttering to himself, 
"Shame ! shame ! on a conquered king." 



To understand properly Henry's work in organizing courts of 
law (already touched upon above), one must glance backward 
and forward from his day. The feudal "court" of the Norman 
kings resembled that of any great lord except in size. Any 
vassal who held land directly of the king (any "tenant-in- 
chief") had the right to attend, but in practice, the smaller 
"tenants-in-chief" were not often present; and the composition 
of the court varied with the localities where it chanced to be 



RISE OF ENGLISH LAW COURTS 515 

called. Under these conditions, there grew up a smaller, more 
permanent body, composed of officers of the king steadily in 
attendance upon his person. This inner body kept the name 
"the king's court" {curia regis), while the larger and less 
frequent gatherings came to be called "the Great Council." 

By the time of Henry I, the "court" began to have consider- 
able judicial business. It began also to have different names 
when meeting for different purposes. When it met to look 
after the king's revenues, it assembled in a treasury room, 
around a "chequered" table (marked off into small squares, for 
the convenient counting of the little piles of money which were 
laid upon it by the sheriffs). In such meetings, the court was 
called "the Exchequer," while at other times it was still called 
merely "the king's court." 

Henry I began to send out members of the court, now and 
then, to collect revenues and to oversee the administration of 
justice in the shire courts. Henry II, we have seen, renewed 
and extended this practice. The circuit judges had become a 
distinct body of men within the "court," but they might still, 
at times, meet with the larger body for its other work. Appeals 
from circuit judges might still be made to the king. To hear 
such appeals, Henry set off another distinct body of judges, 
called the Court of Common Pleas, because, like the circuit 
judges, it dealt mainly with questions of property {civil cases) 
between man and man. To decide important criminal cases, 
another body of judges was set aside, upon a particular "bench" 
in the room where the king's court gathered. This group came 
to be known as "the Court of the King's Bench." 

A century later, Edward I completed this growth. He made 
the Exchequer, the King's Bench, and the Common Pleas into 
wholly separate bodies, sitting each in its own fixed place, each with 
its permanent body of judges devoted exclusively to its work. In 
the time of Henry II, the lawyers, of whom mention is made so 
often, were still all great churchmen with some knowledge of the 
Roman law. But by the time of Edward, legal business had 
increased so much that law had become a profession apart from 



516 THE TYRANNY OF JOHN 

the church, and large numbers of trained "lay" lawyers prac- 
ticed in the courts much in the same way as at present. 

Between the great Henry and the great Edward came three 
weak, would-be tyrants, Richard (1189-1199), John (1199- 
1217), and John's son, Henry III (1217-1272). Richard "The 
Lion-Hearted" cared mainly for military glory, and spent 
only seven months of his eleven years' reign in England — 
mainly to raise money. The misrule of John resulted in 
Magna Carta ; that of Henr}^, in the first true Parliament. 



liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut dissaisiatur, aut utlagetLi 
se man shall he taken, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawe 



aut exuietur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nee super euui ibimus nee super 
or banished, <>r i}i any way destroyed, nor will ice go upon him nor upon 



m tnU ^U^u nMuiiTifuitM I'KwJTiAjipttgcmtw 



itre 

sum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terras. 
him send, except hy the lefjaljndqmeiit of his peers or by the law of the land. 

Nulli vendemus, nuUi negabimus, aut differemus, rectum aut justiciam. 
To no one will ive sell, to no one will we deny, or delay, right or justice. 

Sections 39 and 40 of Magna Carta. — The bars are facsimiles of the 
writing in the charter, with the curious abbreviations of the medieval 
Latin. Below each line is given the Latin in full with a translation. 

' Toward the close of his reign, John's oppression brought all 
classes of Englishmen to unite against him. In 1213, while he 
was warring in France, a mass meeting of English barons and 
knights and townsmen gathered to discuss redress of grievances. 
Amid stern enthusiasm, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, brought before the gathering the long-forgotten charter 
of Henry I. On this basis, Langton and the leaders of the nobles 
then drew up the demands of the meeting. John at first re- 
fused even to look at the document. But a mighty army of 
two thousand knights, supported by the townsmen of London 



AND MAGNA CARTA 517 

arrayed in their "train bands," marched against him ("the 
Army of God and Holy Church"). John was deserted by all 
but a few foreign mercenaries ; and, Ju7ie 15, 1215, at a meadow 
of the Thames called Rmmymede, he was forced to sign the 
Great Charter, — the " first great document in the Bible of 
English Liberties." 

The Charter claimed only to state the old liberties of Eng- 
lishmen, but the closing provision expressly sanctioned rebellion 
against a king who should refuse to obey it. That is, it set the 
law of the land above the himfs will. True, in some other coun- 
tries during the Middle Ages, the great vassals extorted charters 
of liberties for themselves from their kings. But the peculiar 
features of this Charter are: (1) the barons promised to their 
dependents the same rights they demanded for themselves 
from the king ; and (2) special provisions looked after the wel- 
fare of townsmen and even of villeins. The wording, neces- 
sarily, belongs to a feudal age ; but, as a new society and new 
needs grew up, men read new meanings into the old language 
and made it fit the new age. In the next two centuries, English 
kings were obliged to "confirm" the Charter thirty-eight times ; 
and its principles, and some of its wording, have passed into the 
constitution and laws of every American state. 

The Charter defined precisely the "aids" to which suzerains 
were entitled, — and so put an end to extortion. It declared 
that the king could raise no scutage (p. 510) or other unusual 
"aid" without the consent of the Great Council, — and since 
all vassals of the king had a right to attend the Council, this 
established the principle. No taxation without the consent of the 
taxed. It declared an accused man entitled to speedy trial, — 
and so laid the foundation for later laws of "habeas corpus." 
It affirmed that no villein, by any fine, should lose his oxen or 
plow, and so foreshadowed our modern laws providing that 
legal suits shall not take from a man his home or his tools. Two 
notable provisions are given in the cut on page 516. 

Henry III was a pious, frivolous, extravagant tyrant. After 
many years the people found a champion in Simon, Earl of Mont- 



518 THE TYRANNY OF HENRY III 

fort, most powerful of English nobles and brother-in-law of the 
king. The struggle finally became civil war, and Simon won 
at the Battle of Lewes (1264). For a year he was master of 
England. Then Prince Edward, once Simon's loved disciple, 
rallied the royal party, took the great Earl by surprise at 
Evesham, and defeated and slew him (1265). Soon after, the 
prince succeeded to the throne as Edward I, to extend and 
round out the work of Henry II in a long series of laws. 

Henry II and Edward I were the two great " lawgivers " 
among the English kings. Henry carried his many reforms, 
not by royal decrees, but by a series of "assizes" (codes) drawn 
up by the Great Council ; and Edward carried his in an even 
longer series of "statutes" enacted by a new national legislature 
which we call Parliament. 

Some sort of " Assembly" has always made part of the English 
government. Under the Saxon kings, the Witan (or meeting of 
Wisemen) sanctioned codes of laws and even deposed and elected 
kings. It consisted of large landowners and officials and the 
higher clergy, with now and then some mingling of more demo- 
cratic elements, and it was far more powerful than the Prank- 
ish Mayfield. 

After the Conquest, the Witan gave way to the Gi-eat Council 
of the Norman kings. A king was supposed to rule "with the 
advice and consent" of his Council; but in ordinary times that 
body was merely the king's mouthpiece until Henry II raised 
it to real importance. Magna Cai*ta gave it added weight by 
the provision that no new "tax" should be imposed without its 
consent and by prescribing just how it should be called together.. 
All who held land directly of the king ("tenants-in-chief," or 
"barons") were entitled to be present, but only the "great 
barons" ever came. According to the Charter, thereafter the 
great barons were to be summoned individually by letter, and 
the numerous smaller barons by a general notice read by the 
sheriffs in the court of each county. 

Still the smaller barons failed to assemble ; and in the troubles 
of the reign of Henry III, on two or three occasions, the sheriffs 



AND THE RISE OF PARLIAMENT 



519 



had been directed to see to it that each county sent knights to 
the gathering. Thus a representative element was introduced into 
the National Assembly. This was a thoroughly natural step for 
Englishmen to take. The principle of representative govern- 
ment had taken root long before in local institutions. The 
"four men" of each township present in court of hundred or 
shire (p. 505) spoke for all their township. The sworn "jurors" 
of a shire who gave testimony in compiling Domesday Book 




A FotTETEENTH Centttry Bridge IN RuRAi^ ENGLAND, near Danby in 
Oxfordshire. — From Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life. 



under William I, or who "presented" offenders for trial under 
Henry II, spoke for the whole shire. England was familiar 
with the practice of selecting certain men from a community to 
speak for the community as a whole. This principle was now 
applied in a central gathering, for all England. 

So far, indeed, only the land-holding aristocracy had any 
part in the Great Council, directly or indirectly. But now, 
after the Battle of Lewes, Simon of Montfort seized upon this 
system of representation for wider usefulness. The writs for 



Simon's 
Parliament 
of 1265 



520 



THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT 



the famous Parliament of 1265, issued by Simon's direction 
while the king was in his power, called for the attendance of two 
knights from each shire and also of two burgesses from each 
borough, to sit with the lords and clergy. Simon wanted more 
than money. He wanted the moral support of the nation — 
which could be given only by a body representing the people 
of England. 

Then, in the "Model Parliament" of 1295, Edward I adopted 
Simon's plan. Each shire and each borough was called upon 
ment," 1295 to send its two representatives, — since, as Edward's writ read, 
"that which touches all should be approved by all." From 
that time, the regular representation of counties and boroughs 
became a fixed principle in the English national assembly. 
For the first time in the world's history, representative government 
was put upon a working basis. 

Once more Edward had been the disciple of his old instructor, 
Simon of Montfort. When the great Earl, on the fatal morn- 
ing of Evesham, beheld the sun glancing through the mists 
upon the glittering arms of Edward's advancing host, and 
recognized that the Prince had caught him in the toils and 
that defeat was certain, he exclaimed proudly, as he sought 
death in headlong charge upon the spears, " It was from me that 
he learned it." And so, thirty years later, as John Richard 
Green well says, Simon's spirit, looking down upon the Model 
Parliament, might cry, "It was from me that he learned it." 



Half a century later. Parliament divided into two Houses. 
Edward's Parliaments, like Simon's, contained the "three es- 
tates"^ — clergy, nobles, and burgesses. The greater nobles 
and the greater clergy had personal summons ; the other classes 
were represented by delegates, — the smaller landholders by 
the elected "knights of the shire," the towns by their chosen 
burgesses, and the lower clergy by elected representatives, one 
for each district. 

At first all sat together. Had this continued, the townsmen 

1 "Estate" means a class of people with distinct duties and privileges. 



DIVIDES INTO LORDS AND COMMONS 521 

would never have secured much voice : they would have been 
frightened and overawed by the nobles. The result would 
have been about as bad if the three estates had come to sit 
separately, as they did in France and Spain. With so many 
distinct orders, an able king could easily have played off one 
against the other. But England followed a different course. The 
inferior clergy, very happily, soon refused to attend Parliament. 
The great spiritual lords (bishops and abbots), with personal 
summons, were not very numerous by themselves, and so they 
sat with the great lay lords. Thus, when the different orders 
began to sit apart, the great peers, lay and spiritual, who were 
summoned by indimdual letters, made a "House of Lords," 
while the representative elements — knights of the shire and 
burgesses, who had been accustomed to act together in shire 
courts — came together, in the national assembly, as the " House 
of Commons." 

The three estates faded into two; and even these two were not The 
distinct. For in England, unlike the case upon the continent " s^^itry " 
(p. 481), only the oldest son of a lord succeeded to his father's between 
title and nobility and to the right to a personal summons to the " ^^^^^ " 
House of Lords. The younger sons — and even the oldest "Commons' 
son during his father's life — belonged in the gentry (gentle- 
man) class, and at most were "knights of the shire." As such, 
oftentimes, the son or the brother of an earl sat for his county 
in the House of Commons beside the shopkeeper from the town. 
The gentry in the Commons formed a link to bind Lords and Com- 
mons together. 

For Further Reading. — Magna Carta is given in all Source 
Books of English History. Mrs. Green's Henry II and Edward 
Jenks' Edward Plantagenet are excellent stories. Green's English 
People is the best one work. 



CHAPTER LII 

"THE CONTINENT" IN THE FEUDAL AGE 

In 987 in "France" the degenerate Carolingian ^ line gave 
way to Hugh Capet, founder of the long line of Capetian kings. 
Hugh found France in feudal fragments with varying laws and 
tongues. Indeed he was crowned, not King of France, but 
"King of the Gauls, Bretons, Danes, Normans, Aquitanians, 
. . . and Gascons." In the next three centuries, by shrewd, 
tireless policy, a series of able rulers welded these unpromising 
fragments into a French nation — with a common language 
and a common patriotism. It was not the people here who 
fused themselves into a nation in a long struggle against royal 
despotism — as in England. It was the kings who made the 
French nation, in a long struggle against feudal anarchy within 
and foreign conquest from without. 

The most striking steps in this ad^'^ance were taken by Philip 
II. When he came to the French throne, Henry II was still 
working wisely and zealously to strengthen national unity in 
England. But in France Henry was the chief obstacle to national 
unity. As a great vassal he held six times as much French 
territory as Philip did (p. 509), and to make that territory more 
completely his own, he upheld other vassals in their struggles 
against the French crown. Philip set Richard on to make war 
against his father (p. 514) ; and when Richard had become king, 
Philip intrigued with his brother John, Finally, when John 
succeeded to the English crown, and so to the French fiefs, his 
follies and crimes gave Philip his long-sought opportunity. 
Philip's "court" of great vassals summoned John to answer for 
his abuses ; and, on his failure to appear, declared his fiefs for- 

1 From Carolus, Latin for Charles : the line of Charlemagne. 
522 







ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 
1154-1453. 



Jjimit of the French Kingdom. — — 
Poaaeastofw of Plantagenet Kinffa_ 
Lands of the French Kings 



SCALE OF MILE8 



Independent I^fs in Ftumm , 

T»rritori/ of CharUa the Bbid ofBurgimdy^ 



THE GROWTH OF FRANCE 523 

feited to the crown. Philip enforced this judgment by arms, Growth of 
so far as concerned Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and t®"it°'y 
Poitou. The king of England, as Duke of Aquitaine, remained 
one of the greatest French vassals ; but the northwest quarter of 
"France" had been added to the French crown, and the imme- 
diate territory of the French kings was quadrupled. At last, 
too, "France" reached the sea. In another series of wars, 
Philip acquired southeastern France, and won his way to the 
Mediterranean. At the opening of his reign, he had ruled 
directly only a twelfth of modern France. At the close, he ruled 
more than two thirds of it. 

As the French kings added territory to territory, so too they Louis IX, 
added authority to authority, until by 1300 they became the ^^^ p^ ^^ 
most absolute sovereigns in Europe. Here, too, Philip II made 
a beginning. He divided the royal territory into great districts, 
and over these he set royal officers, usually of humble origin, so 
that they could not aspire to independent power. This work 
of organization was completed before the year 1300 by Philip's 
grandson, Louis IX (St. Louis), and by Louis' grandson, Philip 
IV, surnamed the "Fair" for his handsome face. 

The feudal lords lost all power in government, except over Growth 
their serfs and villeins : the small vassals and the townsmen absohitism 
found escape from their rapacity and capricious tyranny. In 
England this escape had come through the courts, the itinerant 
justices, and the free principles of the common law ; and English- 
men grew to have an instinctive reverence for courts and law 
as the protectors of liberty. In France the like security came 
(a little later than in England) through the despotic power 
intrusted to their officers by the absolute French kings ; and for 
centuries Frenchmen came to trust autocracy as Englishmen trusted 
law. 

This contrast is shown, in part, in the history of the French The Estates 
institution which most resembled the English Parliament. ^^^^ 
Philip the Fair had completed his reforms by adding repre- 
sentatives of the towns to the nobles and clergy in the Great 
Council of France. This brought together all three "estates" ; 



524 



GERMANY IN THE FEUDAL AGE 



and the gathering was called the Estates General (States Gen- 
eral), to distinguish it from smaller gatherings of estates in the 
separate provinces. The first meeting in this form was held in 
1302, only a few years after the "Model Parliament" in Eng- 
land. But Philip and his successors used the Estates General 
only as a convenient taxing machine. It never became a govern- 
ing body, as the English Parliament did. Nor did the French 
people know how to value it, as the English quickly learned to 
value Parliament. The kings assembled the Estates General 
only when they chose, and easily controlled it. When they no 
longer needed it, the meetings grew rarer, and finally ceased, 
without protest from the people. 



In Germany the Carolingian line died out even sooner than 
in France, and then the princes chose a Saxon duke for King 
of the Germans. The second of these Saxon kings was Otto I. 
His first great work was to end forever the barbarian inroads. 
The nomad Hungarians (p. 469) once more broke across the 
eastern border in enormous numbers. Otto crushed them with 
horrible slaughter at the Battle of Lechfeld. The Hungarians 
never again attacked Christendom. SoOn, indeed, they them- 
selves adopted Christianity and settled down in modern Hungary 
as one of the family of European nations. 

Otto followed up his success. Year by year, he forced further 
back the Slavs from his eastern borders, and established " marks " 
along that whole frontier. On the extreme southeast was the 
Eastmark (against the Hungarians), to grow into modern 
Austria, while the Mark of Brandenburg on the northeast 
(against the Slavs) was to grow into modern Prussia. '^ Otto's 
campaigns, too, compelled the heathen Slavs to receive mission- 
aries and admit monasteries ; and German nobles, hungry for 
land, began a new colonizing movement which soon extended 

1 The district inhabited by the original Prussians lay far east of Germany 
proper — far beyond even the mark of Brandenburg. The Prussians were 
a mixed people, Lithuanians, Slavs, and (some of their own historians have 
claimed) a portion of the Vandals who had been among the subjects of 
Attila the Hun. 



OTTO AND THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 525 

Germany from the Elbe to the Oder and carried swarms of German 
settlers among even the savage Prussians and the Slavs of the 
heathen Baltic coast. 

It should have been the work of the German kings to foster False ambi- 
this defensive colonization along their barbarous eastern borders, Qermni, ^ 
and to fuse the Germans themselves into a true nation. But kings 
Otto and his successors were drawn from this work, so well 
begun, by greedy dreams of wider empire. 

Otto was a more powerful king than any other in Europe 
in his day. In France, the Capetians had not yet come to the 
throne ; in England, the House of Alfred was still warring with 
the Danelaw. Otto gave Germany an early start toward union 
and power. In return, German song made him a popular hero, 
and loved to picture his long wavy beard and his "hawk eyes" 
restlessly moving "as if seeking prey." 

And in seeking prey, Otto now ruined his fair work. For Otto 
half a century the Empire in the West had lapsed. Otto was [^^ g^f 
tempted to restore it — as a mask for seizing upon Ital}^ Roman 
That unhappy land had no shadow of union. Saracens from 05^^*'^*' 
Africa contested the south with the Greek Empire and the 
Lombards, and the north was devastated by ferocious wars be- 
tween petty states. Otto invaded Italy, and m 963 had himself 
consecrated by the pope at Rome as "Emperor of the Romans." 
Says Herbert Fisher : " By a strange freak of fortune the title Ruin to both 
and traditions of the Caesars passed to the latest barbarian ^^^^^^l 
arrived within the circle of civilization." For the next three 
centuries every German king, as soon as he could march to 
Rome, was crowned Emperor. 

The restored Empire was "the Holy Roman Empire of the 
German people." It did not include all "Western Europe," 
like Charlemagne's Empire in its day. France was outside, 
as were the new Christian kingdoms in England, Scandinavia, 
Poland, and Hungary. As a physical power it rested wholly 
on "German" military prowess. 

And it was "Holy." It claimed to share the headship of 
Christendom with the papacy, but the relation between em- 



526 



THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 



Popes and 
Emperors 



Hildebrand 
becomes 
Gregory VII 



perors and popes was not defined. Soon they quarreled, and 
then followed three centuries of fatal strife. 

The connection with Italy brought to Germany somewhat of 
the culture and art of the ancient world ; but in government and 
industry it spelled ruin. Otto was merely the first of a long line 
of German kings who led splendid German armies across the 
Alps, to melt away in fever beneath the Italian sun. German 
strength was frittered away in foreign squabbles, and the chance 
to make a German nation was lost for nine hundred years. 

No better were the results to Italy. A German king, how- 
ever much a "Roman" Emperor, could enter Italy only with a 
German army at his back. The southern land was a conquered 
province, ruled by uncouth northern barbarians. 

The dismal story of three hundred years' strife is brightened 
by the names of two great popes, — Gregory VII and Innocent 
III, — and of three striking figures among the emperors, — 
Henry IV, Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick 11. 

The first emperors set up and deposed popes almost at will. 
The restoration of the papacy to a power that enabled it to set 
up and depose emperors was due mainly to Hildebrand. This 
remarkable man, the son of a Tuscan laborer, became a monk 
in his youth. He had a frail body but a fiery soul and great 
practical sagacity. In 1045, at the age of twenty-one, he 
became papal chaplain, and for eighteen years, under five suc- 
cessive popes, he directed the papal policy. More than once he 
might himself have been made pope, and at last, in 1073, the 
people of Rome forced the election upon him. The crowds 
gathered for the funeral of the late pope raised the shout, "Let 
Hildebrand be our bishop." The cardinals (p. 497) approved 
the choice. Hildebrand yielded, took the name Gregory VII, 
and, with fresh vigor, began to make real his dream of a uni- 
versal papal monarchy. The Empire was to be subject to the 
papacy, as the body to the soul. The pope, he wrote, "may 
depose emperors. . . . He may absolve subjects from their 
allegiance. . . . He himself may be judged by no man." 

The strife between emperor and pope came to a head at this 



HENRY JV AND HILDEBRAND 527 

time upon "investitures." The emperor appointed all bishops 
and abbots in Germany, and "invested" them with the staff 
and ring (the symbols of their spiritual office) as well as with their 
lands. Gregory regarded this practice, naturally, as connected 
with the sin of simony — the selling of spiritual office. On the 
other hand, the emperor sorely needed to keep temporal control 
over spiritual lords who held also in their hands half the land 
and wealth of Germany. 

In 1075 Gregory threatened to excommunicate all bishops Hildebrand 
and abbots who should thereafter receive their investiture Henry IV 
from a lay ruler, along with the rulers themselves. To the 
emperor, Henry IV, an able but headstrong ruler, this seemed 
a declaration of war. He declared Gregory guilty of infamous 
crimes and pronounced him deposed. "Hildebrand," ran the 
imperial defiance, "not pope, but false monk". . . . "descend 
and surrender the apostolic chair, which thou hast usurped. 
... I, Henry, king by the grace of God, together with all my 
bishops, do call to thee, ' Get thee down, get down to everlasting 
damnation. 

Gregory's reply ran : " St. Peter, chief of the apostles, . . . 
for the honor and security of thy church, ... I withdraw, 
through thy power and authority, from Henry, the king, who has 
risen against thy church with unheard of insolence, the rule 
over the whole kingdom of the Germans and over Italy ; and I 
forbid any one to serve him as king." 

Henry's friends fell away, — unable to stand before the The 
terrors of the papal bull, — and in a few months he was helpless, ab^ect^"^ ^ 
A council of German nobles was called, over which the pope was submission 
to preside, to act on Henry's deposition. By swift submission, ^ ^°^ 
Henry saved his crown. He hurried into Italy, and, at Canossa, 
met the pope, already on his way across the Alps. The stern 
Gregory refused to see the suppliant, who stood barefoot, in a 
penitent's garb, through three days of extreme cold, amid the 
snow and rocks before the castle gate. Admitted finally to the 
pope's presence, after promising abject submission to his will, 
whatever it might be, Henry threw himself in tears at the feet 



528 



THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 



Hilde- 
brand's 
exile and 
death 



Later 
phases 
of the 
strife 



The Con- 
cordat of 
Worms, 1 122 



Frederick 

Barbarossa, 

1152-1190 



of his conqueror, crying, " Spare me. Holy Father, spare me ! " 
Gregory also was moved to tears, and gave Henry the kiss of 
peace. 

But Gregory had pushed his victory too far, or else not far 
enough. The foes of Henry in Germany felt that the pope 
had deserted them, and the mass of the nation were angered 
by the humiliation of their king, and rallied round him. After 
some delay, since there was no change in the matter of inves- 
titures, Gregory issued another decree of deposition. But the 
opportunity was gone. The German bishops went through the 
form of electing another pope. There followed a distressing 
tangle of wars. Finally, Gregory was driven from Rome, and 
soon after he died in the south of Italy (1085), exclaiming sadly, 
" I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity ; therefore I die 
in exile." 

Henry had no happier fate. The quarrel was continued with 
the new pope. Henry's sons were stirred up to rebel against 
their father, and in his old age the emperor met many reverses. 
For years he was a prisoner ; and he died in 1106, broken-hearted, 
in the midst of defeat and shame. For five years his body lay 
in unconsecrated ground, before the church would remove the 
curse from his ashes. 

Not long afterward, at the city of Worms (1122), the long 
quarrel was settled by a reasonable compromise, known as the 
Concordat of Worms. Bishops were to be elected by the clergy 
and consecrated by the pope ; but the emperor was to have a 
possible veto upon any election, inasmuch as the candidate was 
to receive from him the investiture of the episcopal lands. ^ 

After a truce for a generation, the conflict between popes and 
emperors broke forth again. A new ruling family — the Hohen- 
staufen — had come to the imperial throne. The first impor- 
tant ruler of this line was Frederick I, surnamed Barbarossa, or 
Red Beard. Barbarossa was bent upon uniting all Italy into 



1 This compromise seems to have been modeled upon one which had 
been made just before in England between Henry I (p. 508) and Anselm, 
his great Archbishop of Canterbury. 



FREDERICK OF THE RED BEARD 529 

one state under German rule. This policy brought him into 
conflict with the rising towns of North Italy ; and the popes, 
fearing that his victory would end their own independence, 
threw their weight on the side of the towns. 

Time after time, Frederick led German armies across the 
Alps. Milan, the greatest city in the Po valley, was razed to 
the ground, and its inhabitants were scattered in unwalled 
villages. Some years afterward, however, while Frederick 
was at Rome, a sudden pestilence of the Italian summer swept 
away his army. Twenty-five thousand men perished in a 
week, — "slain by the angel of the Lord," like the host of 
Sennacherib before Jerusalem, said the papal party. The 
cities seized their chance and flew to arms. Under the pope's 
lead, they bound themselves together in "the Lombard League," 
the first citj^-federation since Greek days ; and at the hattle of 
Legnano, 1176, the emperor was completely defeated, barely 
escaping with life after having been left for dead on the field. 
The Peace of Constance, signed soon after, gave the towns the Battle of 
right to fortify themselves, to raise their own troops, to wage war and'peace 
on their own account, to coin money, and to regulate all their of Con- 
internal concerns. Practically, they had become free republics. ^ ^^^^ 

Despite the defeat of Legnano, Frederick remained the 
greatest and most honored monarch in Europe. His court 
was one of pomp and splendor. He looked upon France and 
England as fiefs of the Empire ; and the sovereigns of those lands 
regarded the emperor with profound respect, if not quite as 
their overlord. Of all the old German kings, Barbarossa is the 
popular hero ; and centuries after his death, imperialistic legends 
told how he was merely sleeping a magic sleep, upright upon a 
golden throne in the heart of the Kyffhauser Mountain, crown 
on head and scepter in hand. At the appointed hour, in his 
country's need, when the ravens should cease circling about the 
mountain top, Barbarossa would awake, to restore German 
rule. The admiration of the people for this hero of conquest 
is one thread in the making of the evil side of the recent German 
Empire. 



530 



THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 



Barbarossa's son, Henry VI, married the heiress of the 
Norman kingdom in Sicily, and so brought South Italy into union 
with the Empire. But at Henry's death, his son (afterward 
Frederick II) was a child of three years; and for almost a 
generation rival claimants struggled for the crown. During 
this period of decadence for the Empire, more plainly than ever 
before, the sovereign power in Europe was the papacy, under the 
stern morality, tremendous energy, imperious character, and 
able administration of Innocent III. 

Innocent became feudal overlord and protector of the Tuscan 
towns, and he was guardian of Frederick, the child-king of 
Sicily. Thus he was safe from attack by Italy, north or south, 
while conditions in Germany enabled him to make and unmake 
emperors. The election of a certain Philip as emperor was dis- 
puted by a rival, Otto. Innocent claimed the right to decide. 
He rejected Philip as "an obstinate persecutor of the church," 
and gave his award to Otto, because that prince was declared to 
be "devoted to the church." " Him, therefore, we . . . summon 
to take the imperial crown." Afterward, when Otto took up the 
imperial claims against the papacy. Innocent declared him de- 
posed, and secured the election of the young Frederick, grandson 
of Barbarossa. 

The death of Innocent, in 1216, left the field clear, for the 
moment, for the young emperor, Frederick II, who was just 
coming to manhood. Frederick II has been called the last of 
the great medieval emperors and the first of the great modern 
kings — " the most gifted of the sons of men, ... a wonderful 
man in a wonderful age." Unlike his grandfather, Barbarossa, 
he was an Italian by birth and nature. In person, he was 
slight, bald, nearsighted. A Mohammedan historian wrote 
that as a slave he would not have brought a hundred drachmas. 
He was an enthusiastic patron of literature, a founder of one 
of the early universities, and himself a scholar and an author 
of no mean ability in prose and in verse. He wrote charming 
songs, not in Latin, but in the new Italian tongue of everyday 
life, and was truly called the father of Italian poetry. He was 




JTALY 
Sirrins the InterreBnnin 



80*1:e of MH.E8 



FAILURE OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN 531 

deeply interested in the science of the Arabs. He ridiculed 
trial by ordeal and other medieval superstitions, and his own 
codes of law were far in advance of the barbarous ideas of the 
age. He was a modern, rather than a medieval, — a many- 
sided man, warrior, statesman, lawgiver, scholar, poet. 

At the same time, with all his wonderful genius, he gave his Frederick 
life's energies to buttressing the hopelessly outgrown and totter- „o_gg 
ing system of a universal empire. He left no positive result, 
but was only "the most dazzling of a long line of imperial 
failures." The popes feared lest their principality should be 
crushed between the Hohenstaufen, north and south ; and the 
danger made them Frederick's relentless foes. During much of 
his reign, the emperor was under sentence of excommunication 
and deposition. He spent his last years like a lion at bay, 
amid the fierce onslaughts of open enemies and the cruel 
treacheries of trusted friends ; and his death (1250) was fol- 
lowed by quick and final ruin for his plans and by the extinction 
of his family. The death of his son, Conrad IV (1254), ushered 
in a long interregnum for the Empire, and marked the separation 
of Germany from Italy. 

The popes had excluded the Germans from. Italy, but they had 
not saved Italy from foreign domination. Just at the last, 
to crush one of Frederick's sons in Sicily, the pope had "given'' 
the Sicilian crown to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of 
France. For centuries to come, Italy was to remain disunited 
— the battle ground of France, Spain, and Germany. 

The emperors had failed utterly. The Empire was no longer " Fist- 
either "Holy" or "Roman" : it remained only "German." And QlLnnnv 
even the German kingdom seemed extinct. For twenty years 1254-1273 
(1254-1273), Germany was ruled by "Fist-law." There was 
no emperor and not even a king. The old kingdom dissolved 
into petty fragments, some three hundred in number, — free 
cities, duchies, marks, counties, — each virtually an independent 
monarchy or city-republic. 

And yet it is only fair to remember that the imperialistic 
ambitions of the Ottos and Hohenstaufens, fantastic and 



532 THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 

absurd as they seem to us, had at least far more excuse than the 
like dreams of universal empire in a later age held by a Napoleon 
or a Hohenzollern. Says the historian Freeman, — "To men 
of that time, living amid the ijerpetual strife of small pmici- 
palities, the vision of one universal Empire of law and right 
shone with an alluring brightness, which we . . . can hardly 
understand." 

Fact Drills 

1. Dates: 843, 962, 1066 (class fill in the events) ; 1075-1254 (struggle 
between Empire and papacy), 1215, 1265, 1295. 

2. Fix other events in connection with the dates given above; such as 
Lechfeld, Lombard League, Legnano, Estates General. 

3. Extend list of terms for explanation : Hugh Capet, Canossa, etc. 



CHAPTER LIII 

THE CRUSADES, 1100-1300 

For the last two centuries of the feudal age, all Western 
Europe was deeply moved by one common impulse. To under- 
stand this, we must look at conditions outside Europe. 




The Damascus Gate in thk Walls of Jerusalem To-day- 
rebuilt by the Saracens. 



■As 



The Mohammedans (pp. 452-455) still ruled from the Pyre- Power and 
nees to the Ganges. They had utilized the old culture of Persia ^^ ^M^ham- 



Their governments were as good as the Oriental medan 

World 



and of Greece 

world had ever known. Their roads and canals encouraged 
commerce and bound together distant regions. Their mag- 
nificent cities were built with a peculiar and beautiful archi- 

533 



534 SARACENIC CULTURE, ELEVENTH CENTURY 



lecture, characterized by the horseshoe arch, the dome, the 
turret, the graceful minaret, and a rich ornament of " arabesque." 
Their manufactures were the finest in the world, both for beau- 
tiful design and for delicate workmanship. Their glass and 
pottery and metal work, their dyestuffs, their paper, their cloth 
manufactures, their preparations of leather, all represented in- 
dustries almost or wholly unknown to the West. We still speak 

of "Toledo" blades, and 



"Morocco" leather, while 
" muslins " and " dam- 
asks" recall the superior 
manufacturing processes 
at Mosul and Damascus. 
Saracenic farming was 
scientific, wuth the use of 
irrigation and fertilizers ; 
and the Moors in Spain 
delighted in lovely gardens 
adorned with many new 
^'arieties of fruit and 
flowers which they pro- 
duced by grafting. Europe 
was soon to owe to them 
many of these products 
and processes, with many 
other things long forgotten 
or new — spices, oranges, 
lemons, rice, sugar cane, 
dates, asparagus, sesame, buckwheat, apricots, watermelons, 
perfumes, calicoes, satins, the crossbow, the windmill. 

In intellectual lines their superiority was no less marked. 
While Europe had only a few monastic schools to light its 
"Dark Ages," the Arabs had great universities, with libraries 
containing hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. In Persia 
and in Spain they had created a noble literature, both prose 
and poetry. Philosophy, theology, law, rhetoric, were subjects 




A Detail from the Mosque of 
Cordova. See also p. 456. 



GREEK EMPIRE, ELEVENTH CENTURY 



535 



for special study. The old Chaldean astrology (p. 59) was 
becoming true astronomy in the hands of the Arabs in Spain. 
The heavens still keep proof of their studies in its thick sprin- 
kling of Arabic names, like Aldebaran, while many terms in our 
texts on astronomy {azimuth, zenith, nadir) bear like testimony. 
From India they brought the "Arabic" notation, while Europe 
was still struggling with clumsy Roman numerals. Algebra 
and alchemy (chemistry) are Arabic in origin as in name, and 
spherical trigonometry was their creation. And while Europe 
still treated disease from the viewpoint of an Indian " medicine 
man," the Saracens had established, on Greek foundations, a 
real science of medicine. On the other hand, Mohammedanism 
expressly sanctioned slavery and polygamy, and so gave no 
chance for the rise of woman or of the working classes. 



Empire 




Midway in character, as in geography, between Latin Europe The 
and Mohammedan Asia, lay the Greek Empire, living on for ^^^^^^^ 
centuries a quiet, orderly 
life. In material prosperity 
it was unexcelled anywhere 
in the world, and in intel- 
lectual activity it was sur- 
passed only by the Saracens. 
It was a civilized state, 
standing on the defensive 
against barbarian attack, 
and waging its wars mainly 
with Norse mercenaries. 
The emperors were often 
devoted scholars and able 

authors, as well as great rulers. Constantinople in magnificence 
and extent and comfort was unapproached by the rude towns 
of France and Germany ; and its wealth, splendor, and com- 
forts, — its paved and lighted streets, its schools and theaters, 
its orderly police system, its hospitals and parks, — were 
amazing to the few visitors from the West. Its million keen- 



A Byzant (Bezant). — A gold coin issued 
by the emperors at Constantinople in 
the Middle Ages, which had a wide cir- 
culation, especially from the eighth to 
the thirteenth centuries, in the coun- 
tries of Western Europe when, with 
the exception of Spain, these lands 
had no gold currency of their own. 



536 



THE CRUSADES 



witted people looked with contempt, and with some dread, 
upon the "barbarian" Franks. Such little trade as Western 
Europe possessed was mainly in Greek hands, and the 
"Byzant," the coin of Constantinople, was its money standard. 
In the eleventh century, the civilization of the Saracens ^ 
received a fatal blow, and the existence of the Greek Empire 
was endangered. Political supremacy in the Mohammedan 
world fell to the Turks, a new Tartar people from beyond the 
Jaxartes. The Turks were to play somewhat the same part in 
the Saracenic world that the Teutons had played in the old 
Roman world, — with this tremendous difference, that even 
to the present day they have not assimilated civilizf 'on. The 
Arab culture survived long enough to be transplanted into 
Europe during the Crusades, but in its own home it was doomed 
thereafter to swift decay. 

The Turks were at least mighty soldiers, and they began a 
new era of Mohammedan conquest. Almost at once the greater 
part of the Greek Empire fell into their hands. They overran 
Asia Minor, and established a number of principalities there. 
One of them, called the Empire of "Roum" (Rome), placed its 
capital at Nicaea, only seventy miles from Constantinople. In 
terror, the Greek emperor turned to Western Christendom 
for aid ; and his appeal was the signal for two centuries of 
war, "Cross" against "Crescent." 

The Greek call for aid would have produced little effect, 
however, if Western Europe had not had deep grievances of its 
by the Turk own against the Turk. Pilgrimages to holy shrines were a 
leading feature of medieval life.^ Good men made them to 
satisfy religious enthusiasm ; evil men, to secure forgiveness 
for crime ; sick men, to heal bodily ills. A pilgrimage was an 
act of worship. Chief of all pilgrimages, of course, was that to 
the land where Christ had lived and to the tomb where His 
body had been laid. The Saracens had permitted Christian 



1 Saracen is used sometimes for any Mohammedan power, but strictly 
it belongs only to the Arabs. 

2 Read Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life, 338-403. 



GOD WILLS IT" 



537 



pilgrimages ; but the Turks, when they captured Jerusalem 
from the Arabs, began at once to persecute all Christians there, 
until tales of suffering and wrongs filled Europe with shame and 
wrath. 

The messengers from Constantinople came to Pope Urban, 
as the head of Christendom, in 1095. Urban at once assumed 
the leadership, and at a great gathering of French nobles at 
Clermont preached a war of the Cross to recover the Holy 
Sepulcher from the infidel. His 
eloquence thrilled the multitude 
to a frenzy of enthusiasm, and 
they caught up his cry, "God 
wills it! God wills it!" A great 
expedition was arranged for the 
following spring, and all over 
Europe men were called upon to 
"take the cross": that is, to 
pledge themselves to the expedi- 
tion by fastening a red cross on 
the breast. 

Thus began those movements we 
call the Crusades. Each Crusader 
marched in part to save Eastern 
Christians, partly to avenge West- 
ern pilgrims, and partly to make 
his own (armed) pilgrimage to the 
holiest of shrines. Mingled with 

these motives was the spirit of adventure and greed for land 
and gold. 

The Crusades opened with a pathetic movement. Hordes of 
peasantry, impatient of delay, without waiting for the army 
of nobles, set off to rescue the Holy Land, under a preaching 
monk and a beggar knight, Peter the Hermit and Walter the 
Penniless. These multitudes — ignorant, unorganized, almost 
unarmed — confidently expected divine aid. Most of them 
perished miserably in the terrible journey through the Danube 




A Crusader taking the vow. 
From a thirteenth century 
manuscript. 



"God 
wills it ! 



Peter the 
Hermit's 
crusade 



538 THE CRUSADES 

valley, by starvation and disease, and by the attacks of the 
Christian natives whose lands they were pillaging for food. 
The remnants, as soon as thfey reached Asia, were annihilated 
by the Turks. 

In the spring of 1096 swarms of the real Crusaders began to 
make their way through Europe to Constantinople, the ap- 
pointed place of meeting. There they gathered, some three 
hundred thousand strong, according to the chroniclers, — one 
hundred thousand of them mailed horsemen, — the most 
formidable army Europe had ever sent against Asia. This 
was the "First Crusade." The Greek emperor, fearful lest 
these fierce allies might turn upon his own realm, hastened their 
departure into Asia. There they endured terrible suffering 
and loss, in march, skirmish, battle, and siege. The leaders 
quarreled savagely among themselves, but the Mohammedans' 
at this time were even more broken up into hostile camps ; and 
in July, 1099, the Christians stormed Jerusalem, amid hideous 
butchery and wild transports of religious enthusiasm. 

Letters from the Crusaders give curious and interesting side 
lights on their motives and feelings. One of the leaders was 
Stephen, Count of Blois, who had married a daughter of William 
the Conqueror and was the father of the young prince after- 
ward known as King Stephen of England (p. 508). In 1098, 
from before Antioch, Count Stephen sent to his " sweetest and 
most amiable wife," the following letter : 

"You may be sure, dearest, that my messenger leaves me before 
Antioch safe and unharmed, through God's grace. . . . We have been 
advancing continuously for twenty-three weeks toward the home of our 
Lord Jesus [since leaving Constantinople]. You may know for certain, 
my beloved, that I have now twice as much of gold and silver and of 
many other kinds of riches as when I left you. . . . You must have 
heard that, after the capture of Nicea, we fought a great battle with the 
perfidious Turks, and by God's aid, conquered them. . . . Thence, 
continually pursuing the wicked Turks, we drove them as far as the 
great river Euphrates. . . . Hastening with great joy to Antioch, 
we besieged it, and very often had many conflicts with the Turks, and 
seven times with the citizens of Antioch, and with the innumerable 



•FIGHTING MONKS' 



539 



troops coming to its aid. In all these seven battles, by the aid of the 
Lord God, we conquered, and most assuredly killed a vast host of them. 
Many of our brethren and followers were killed also, and their souls 
were born to the joys of Paradise. . . . These five emirs, with 12,000 
picked Turkish horsemen, suddenly came to aid the inhabitants of 
Antioch. God fought for us, His faithful. On that day we conquered 
them and killed an innumerable multitude ; and we carried back to the 
army more than two hundred 
of their heads, in order that 
the people might rejoice on 
that account. 

"These which I wiite you 
are only a few things, dearest, 
of the many which we have 
done. And because I am not 
able to tell you, dearest, what 
is in my mind, I charge you 
to do right, to watch over your 
land carefully, to do your duty 
as you ought to your children 
and your vassals. ..." 



The greater nobles 
among the Crusaders set 
up four "Latin states" in 
Syria — of vi^hich the chief 
was the " Kingdom of 
Jerusalem." The Cru- 
saders knew of no system 
of government except feu- 
dalism, and so each ruler 
divided his realm in feudal 
fashion among his retainers. 




Effigies of Knights Templar, from 
funeral slabs in the Temple Church, 
London. The crossing of the legs in a 
funeral sculpture indicated a crusader. 



On the soil of Asia, a complete 
feudal society sprang up, to continue the war against the Cres- 
cent. 

These Latin states found the core of their fighting force in a 
new institution, which combined the two opposite ideals of the 
age, — that of the monk and that of the knight. Three orders 
of fighting monks arose. The Knights of St. John, or of the 
Hospital, grew out of an organization to care for the wounded. 



And 

" fighting 

monks " 



540 



THE CRUSADES 



Soon the nurses became themselves warriors and knights. 
They took the monk's threefold vow of poverty, chastity, and 
obedience, and added a fourth, binding themselves to perpetual 
warfare against the infidel. The Templars arose in like manner 
out of a society to succor distressed pilgrims, and the name came 
from the fact that the eight or nine knights who originally 
composed the organization dwelt in a house near Solomon's 
Temple. The Teutoiiic Order grew out of the hospitality 
of a German merchant toward his needy countrymen in 
Jerusalem. 

The Crusades were a continuous movement. From about 
1100 to about 1300 there was constant fighting between Chris- 
tian and Mohammedan in the East. Europe, which in the ninth 
century had been helpless against plundering heathen bands, 
had now grown strong enough to pour into Asia a ceaseless 
stream of mailed knights, with countless followers. At eight 
particular times there were especially important movements of 
mighty armies into Asia, known as the Eight Crusades. The 
most romantic was the one known as the Third. For nearly a 
hundred years after the First Crusade the Christians kept 
possession of Jerusalem ; but during the last half of that time 
the Mohammedans had been slowly gaining ground in Pales- 
tine. Then suddenly Saladin, a new Mohammedan ruler, re- 
captured the Holy City and reduced the Latin states to a 
mere strip of coast. This called Europe again to arms. 
Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Philip II of France, and 
Richard of England, the greatest sovereigns of Europe, joined 
in a mighty effort. But Barbarossa was drowned while bath- 
ing in a little stream in Asia Minor, and the jealousies be- 
tween Philip and Richard broke up the movement before 
Jerusalem was recovered. 

Venice furnished the ships for a Fourth Crusade (1204), and 
managed to divert the movement into an attack upon her com- 
mercial rival Constantinople. For a time a "Latin Empire" 
replaced much of the old Greek Empire, and various petty 
fragments became Prankish principalities — like the brilliant 



WHY THE CRUSADES CEASED 541 

"Duchy of Athens." i Fifty years later, the Greek Empire 
at Constantinople was restored, but it never recovered its earlier 
vigor. The Fourth Crusade, in its greedy attack upon the 
ancient champion of Christendom, was a crime against the 
cause of the Crusades. 

The later Crusades were of little moment. Before 1300, the 
last territory of the Latins in Syria had fallen finally to the 
Turks, and thereafter men who still wished to fight for the Cross 
went to aid the Christian princes in Spain against the Moors, 
or warred against the heathen on the northeast of Europe. 
The Teutonic Order took up the conquest and settlement of 
heathen Prussia (map after page 550). The Knights of St. 
John withdrew to Rhodes, and afterward to Malta, and in 
constant warfare, for two hundred years more, formed the out- 
post of Christendom against Mohammedanism. 

The Crusades ceased because they themselves had helped Why the 
to create a new age. The Europe of 1300 was a different world ^'^'^gg^®^ 
from the Europe of 1100. Trade had grown vastly, and society 
was no longer made up so exclusively of fighters. Men had 
begun to believe less in the saving value of pilgrimages to dis- 
tant shrines ; and they had learned to think more of their duties 
to the world about them. 

Joinville (p. 483), for instance, came of a family of famous 
Crusaders. As a young man he himself accompanied Louis IX 
on the Seventh Crusade, and persisted in continuing it after 
all the other counselors of the king had advised return. But 
many years later, when Louis made a second expedition, Join- 
ville stoutly refused to go at all. Louis urged him to join, — 
"Whereto I replied that while I was serving God and the king 
beyond sea before, the officers of the king [Louis] had ruined 
myself and impoverished my people ; and that if I wished now 
to please God I should remain here to defend my people ; for if 
I risked myself for the Cross, when I saw clearly that it would be 

' It was the famous court of these medieval "Dukes of Athens" that 
Chaucer and Shakspere had in mind in their references to ancient Athenian 
history. Cf. " Duke Theseus," in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 



542 



THE CRUSADES 



for the damage of my people, I should bring down upon me the 
wrath of God, who gave his life to save His people. . . . And I 
considered that those committed a deadly sin who advised him 
to that voyage." 

The indirect results of the Crusades upon Europe were vastly 
more important than the recovery of Palestine could have been. 
New energies awakened ; new worlds of thought opened. The 
intellectual horizon widened. Even among the Arabs, to their 
surprise, as the Crusaders' letters show, they had found men 
brave, just, honorable, and religious. They brought back, too, 
new gains in science, art, architecture, and medical skill ; and 
Europe had learned that there was still more, to learn. 

Many long-forgotten Oriental products (p. 534) became again 
necessaries of life. Some of them were soon grown or manu- 
factured in Europe. Others, like spices, could not be produced 
there, and, in consequence, commerce with distant parts of 
Asia grew enormously. In the absence of fresh meat in winter 
and of our modern root-foods, spices became of immense impor- 
tance for the table. For a time, Venice and Genoa, assisted by 
their favorable positions, monopolized much of the new carrying 
trade ; but all the ports of Western Europe were more or less 
affected. This commercial activity called for quicker methods 
of reckoning ; and so Europe adopted the Arabic numerals. 
Money replaced barter, and bankers appeared, alongside the old 
Jew money-lenders. 

All this undermined both the economic and the military 
basis of feudalism. Money made it unnecessary for the tenant 
to pay rent in service, and enabled the kings to collect "taxes" 
and maintain standing armies. Moreover the Crusades swept 
away the old feudal nobles directly. Hundreds of thousands of 
barons and knights squandered their possessions to prepare for 
the expedition and then left their bones in Palestine. The 
ground was cleared for the rising city democracies and the 
new monarchies (p. 544 ff.). 

And at first these new forces were allies. The "third estate" 
wanted order, and the kings could help secure it. The kings 



AND THEIR RESULTS 543 

wanted money, and the third estate could supply it. Kings and 
towns joined hands to keep down feudal forces. True, a new 
nobility grew up — but with only the honors of the old, not 
with its power. 

For Further Reading. — Three contemporary accounts are printed 
in the Chronicles of the Crusades. Joinville's account in his St. Louis is 
especially excellent. Further source material will be found in Archer's 
Crusade of Richard. I. 

Modern accounts : Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades (probably 
the best account in English) ; Cox, The Crusades ; Gray, The Children's 
Crusade ; Gilman, The Saracen,s ; Adams, Civilization, ch. xi ; Pears, 
Fall of Constantinople ; Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, 
157-194; Lane-Poole, Saladin; Perry, St. Louis. 

In fiction : Scott's Talisman. 



mss^' 




Siege of a Medieval To-nx the summons to surrender — Fiom a six- 
teenth century copper engraving. 



CHAPTER LIV 



THE RISE OF TOWNS, 1100-1300 

From 500 to 1100 a.d. the three figures in European life had 
been the tonsured priest, the mailed horseman, and the field 
laborer, stunted and bent. In the twelfth century, alongside 
priest, noble, and peasant, there stood out a fourth figure — the 
sturdy, resolute, self-confident townsman, or burgher. 

Feudalism and the towns were foes by nature. Feudalism 
had grown out of war, and lived to fight. The noble tried to 
confound the townsman with the serf, treated him always with 
haughty contempt, and usually robbed him when the chance 
offered. The new towns could fight stubbornly, when forced 
to fight ; but they grew out of trade and lived for industry, 
and they shut out the robber-knights by walls and guards. 

In England, noble and townsman were far less hostile than 
on the Continent ; but an event in England, as late as the time 
of Edward I (1300), shows this class war even there. The 

544 



THE RISE OF TOWNS 



545 



town of Boston was holding a great fair.i Citizens guarded 
its gates zealously against any hostile intruders, but an armed 
band of country gentlemen (of the "noble" class) got through 
in the disguise of play actors. When darkness fell, they began 
their horrible work of murder and plunder. They fired every 
booth, slaughtered the merchants, and hurried the booty to 




Ruins of a Rhine Castle above a modern town. 

ships ready at the quay. The horror-stricken people of other 
towns told how streams of molten gold mingled with rivers of 
blood in the gutters. 

True, King Edward, under whose license the fair had been 
promised protection, proved strong enough to hang the leaders 
of these "gentlemen." But in Germany, at the same period, 
like events followed one another in a horrible panorama, with- 

1 Large cities, at fixed times, held great fairs, lasting many days, for all 
the small places in the neighboring regions. Merchants from all the king- 
dom — and, indeed, sometimes from all Europe, — journeyed to such fairs 
with their goods, to reap a harvest from the country folk who crowded 
about their booths. 



546 



THE RISE OF TOWNS 



out attempt at punishment. The towns could shut out the 
"robber knights" by walls and guards. But from their castle 
crags the knights swooped down upon any unwary townsman 
who ventured too near, and even on armed caravans of traders 
on the highway, to rob and murder, or to carry off for ransom. 
Such unhappy captives were loaded with rusty chains that ate 
into the flesh, and were left in damp and filthy dungeons until 
sometimes their limbs rotted away — so that to "rot a peasant" 
became a German by-word. 

Yet it was the "peasant" townsmen, not the knightly fighter, 
who was to make our modern world what it has become. 

In Italy and southern France, the old Roman towns had lived 
along, with shrunken population, subject to neighboring lords. 
Under the new impulse to trade, by 1200, these regions were 
once more dotted with self-governing cities, which modeled 
their institutions, in part at least, on those they had brought 
down from Roman times. Elsewhere, the towns were mainly 
new growths — from peasant villages. Most were small. 
Very few had more than 4000 people. Until the year 1500, 
England had only twb towns with more than 12,000 — London 
and Bristol. 

At first each inhabitant of a town remained directly depend- 
ent upon the feudal lord on whose domain the town was. The 
first advance toward freedom was to change individual bargaining 
to collective bargaining. The town demanded that its chosen 
officers bargain with the lord regarding dues and services to be 
paid by the town, instead of each helpless citizen being left to 
settle for himself at the lord's mercy. In "two centuries of 
revolt," by stubborn heroism and wise use of their wealth, the 
towns won charters guaranteeing such privileges. In the long 
conflict, cities were burned and ravaged ; and countless heroic 
leaders of the townsmen swung in chains from the nobles' gallows, 
or dragged out a more lingering death in dungeons. Nor did 
one victory for a town end the matter. The first charter was 
usually brief and vague — and so became the occasion for 
later struggles to obtain more precise and extensive grants. 



LIFE IN MEDIEVAL TOWNS 



547 



Many a medieval town guarded carefully several successive 
charters in its ironbound town chest. 

Town life showed new wants, new comforts, new occu- 
pations. Thatched hovels, with dirt floors, gave way to com- 
fortable and even stately burghers' homes. Misery and squalor 
among the working classes were replaced, for a large part of 
them, by happy comfort ; and there followed a lavish expendi- 
ture for town halls and cathedrals and for civic feasts and shows. 



Life in the 
town 




Wall of Aigues Mortes, 



a French town which won a liberal charter 
in 1246. 



Still, the medieval European city fell far behind the ancient 
Greek or Roman city or the contemporary Arabian city. 
There were no street lights at night, no city water supply, 
no sewerage, no street-cleaning, no paving. The necessity of 
inclosing the town within lofty stone walls crowded it into 
small space, so that streets were always narrow and dark. 
Dead animals rotted in these streets, and on one occasion in 
the fifteenth century a German emperor, warmly welcomed in 
a loyal city, was almost swallowed up, horse and rider, in the 
bottomless filth. 



548 THE RISE OF TOWNS 

The citizen, too, however safe from feudal tyranny, lived in 
bondage to countless minute and annoying, but necessary, 
town regulations. When the great bell in the town belfry or 
watch tower rang the "curfew" at night, he must "cover his 
fire" and put out all lights, — a precaution against conflagra- 
tion which was particularly necessary because of the closely 
crowded, narrow streets, and the absence of fire companies 
and police. His clothing, and his wife's, must be no richer than 
those prescribed for their particular station. He must serve his 
turn as "watch" in the belfry tower, on the walls,- or in the 
streets at night. In his daily labor he fiiust buy and sell and 
work only according to the minute regulation of his gild. At 
night, no well-to-do citizen stirred abroad without his armor 
and his guard of stout apprentice lads ; and he was always com- 
pelled to fortify and guard his house. 

The people of a town, except the unskilled laborers, were 
grouped in gilds, as in old Roman times. The idea of the gild 
was that all men in the same kind of work in a given district 
ought to unite, to help one another and to arrange matters in 
which they were all interested. Each medieval town had its 
merchant gild and its many craft gilds. These latter were 
unions of artisans, — weavers, shoemakers, glovers, bow-makers, 
drapers, tanners, and so on. York, a small English city of some 
two or three thousand people, had fifty such gilds. Cologne 
had eighty. Even the homes of a gild were grouped together. 
One street was the street of the armorers ; another, of the gold- 
smiths ; and so on. 

Each craft gild contained three classes of members, — masters, 
journeymen, and apprentices. The master owned a shop, 
■ — probably part of the house where his family lived, — and 
employed one or more journeymen, besides a band of appren- 
tices. Apprentices were boys or youths bound out by their 
parents for a term of years to learn the trade. They lived in 
the master's house, ate at his table, and he furnished their 
clothing and taught them "all he knew." After six or seven 
years, when his term of service was up, the apprentice became 



LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL TOWN 



549 




Old Street in Rouen, present condition. The Cathedral is visible at the 
opening of the street into the square. Probably the appearance of the 
street has changed little since the fourteenth century. 



550 



THE RISE OF TOWNS 



a free journeyman, working for wages. For the next few years 
he traveled from place to place, practicing his trade in various 
cities, to see the world and to perfect himself in his "mystery," 
as the secrets of the trade were called. If he could save the 
small amount of money needed, he jfinally set up a shop of his 
own and became a master. As a master, he continued to work 
with his own hands, living among his dependents with a more or 
less paternal care over them. 

The gild was not organized, as the modern trade-union is, 
to regulate the relations of workmen to employers. It was a 
brotherhood, containing both workmen and employers. Its 
purposes were (1) to prevent competition (and so all who 
practiced the trade were forced to enter the gild and abide by 
its rules) ; (2) to prevent monopoly of materials or of op- 
portunity by any of its 
members (and so each 
" brother " had a right to 
share in any purchase by 
another, and no one could 
sell except at appointed 
times and places) ; (3) to 
keep up the price (which 
was fixed by the gild) ; 
and (4) to maintain a high 
standard of goods (and so 
the gild punished severely 
all adulterations, the mix- 
ing of poor wool with 
good, and the giving short 
weight). Thus the gild 
aimed, to protect both pro- 
ducer and consumer. 

The gild was also a fra- 
ternal insurance society. 
Moreover, it had social features, and indeed it often originated 
as a social club for men engaged in the same trade. Through- 




Medieval Town Hall, Oudenarde, 
Belgium, still in use. 



/ 

DOMINIONS OF fl-HE HANSA AND 

OP THE TEUTONIC ORDER AT 

THEIR GREATEST EXTENT. 

(About 1400.) 

Bansa toions are shown thus:- Groningen 
Foreign Faoiories of the League thtis:- Br 
Cities in which the league, or some of its 
members, possessed trading privileges 
thus:- Xannouth 

ITERRITORY OF THE TEUTONIC OEDEK. 



1309. 

Added up to UiO. 




^ 



^ 



Abo 









Mitaii° 



ly^. Y0^° 



,tst\ 






StolpyDauzi?!r-^rx.„^ <^ 
Kolberg \ ^ > XA'^='™°( \ •'' 



Qrodnol 









sfi4 



^. 



pri) 



^"- 



^Breslan 



Krakow ( 



THE "THIRD ESTATE" 



551 




out the Middle Ages the gild feasts were the chief social event 
in the lives of the gild members. 

The townsmen — from rich merchant down through skilled 
artisan — became a " third estate " in government. They were 
not yet "the people." They were 
only one more "class" risen from 
the unreckoned mass ; and they 
looked down upon unskilled work- 
men and farm peasants with con- 
tempt as bigoted and cruel as that 
felt for burghers by the classes 
above them. 

Moreover, the two ruling ele- 
ments, the merchants and the 
artisans, were mutually jealous ; 
and for two centuries (1200-1400), 
in city after city, the aristocratic 
merchant gild struggled in fero- 
cious civil war to shut out the more 
democratic craft gilds from the 
city government. At Magdeburg 
in Germany, in 1302, the demo- 
cratic party, gaining control for a 
moment, burned ten aristocratic 
aldermen at the stake at one 
time. 

For a time it seemed that Europe might be dominated by 
city leagues, like ancient Greece. The Hanseatic League 
(eighty North German towns, with "factories" in foreign 
cities over all North Europe) fought at times with the mightiest 
kings, and won. Similar unions of free towns appeared in 
every land. But in Italy, by 1350, nearly every city had fallen 
under the rule of a tyrant; in France they came completely 
under the despotic power of the king ; in Germany they became 
only one more element in the political chaos ; in England they 
never secured the extreme independence which they possessed 



Torture by Water, a method 
used in medieval towns, on 
the continent, in their bitter 
class strife. This particular 
form of torture to compel 
confession survived to recent 
times in the Spanish Philip- 
pines, and was adopted by 
American soldiers there in 
the barbarous warfare with 
the natives. 



A new 
" third 
estate " 



552 



THE RISE OF TOWNS 



The 
Dominicans 



in other countries. The more advanced parts of Europe moved 
on toward a national life — in which this city life was soon 
absorbed. 

It remains to note a rehgious reform called forth by town life. 
The growing towns did not at first fit into the organization of 
the church. Neither monks nor rural priests took care of the 
religious needs of the crowded populations. The poorer in- 
habitants were miserable in body, too, beyond all words, — 
fever and plague stricken, perishing of want and filth and 
wretchedness such as no modern city knows. ^ Early in the 
thirteenth century, these conditions, together with the spread 
of heretical movements, called forth a general religious revival, 
with the rise of two new orders of religious workers, — the 
Franciscan and the Dominican brotherhoods. 

The Franciscans (1209) took their name from their founder 
Francis of Assisi, known later as Saint Francis. He was moved 
by a passionate pity for the ignorant, dying, despairing dregs 
of the population in the medieval Italian- towns about him. A 
little group of eleven youths caught the inspiration of his lofty 
enthusiasm and self-renunciation. Francis walked to Rome and 
secured sanction for his plans from Innocent III, and at once 
the little band of "brothers" {friars) began their mission. 

They went forth, two and two, to the poor and the outcasts, 
living from day to day in the midst of noisome wretchedness, 
to act as healers and preachers. They nursed lepers, minis- 
tered to the poor, and, with short, homely, fervent speech, 
preached to all the love of Christ and the call to turn from sin. 
They gave themselves utterly to serve their suffering fellows. 
Money they would not touch. Literally, they were barefooted 
beggars, with one garment, living from day to day upon chance 
alms. 

The Dominicans (1215) grew out of the zeal of St. Dominic 
to convert the Albigenses from their heresy. Dominic was a 
powerful and fiery preacher, learned in all the theology of the 
age. Thus, while the Franciscans in origin were missionaries 

1 The best brief account is given in Jessopp's Coming of the Friars, 1-52. 



THE FRIARS; MISSIONARY MONKS 553 

to lighten the sufferings of the poor, the Dominicans were 
preachers to the more intellectual classes. The Franciscans 
(Grey Friars) were the gentler, the Dominicans (Black Friars) 
the sterner, in character. 

The "begging friars" spread swiftly over all Europe. In 
1221, only six years after the founding of the order, Dominicans 
reached England. The friars were more than monks. The 
monk lived in a quiet cloister ; and his first care was for his own 
soul. The friar went wherever he could find most suffering 
and sin, to save the souls and heal the bodies of others. He was 
a missionary monk. 

For Further Reading. — Adams, Civilization, 290-310 ; Cheyney, 
Industrial and Social History of England, 57-95 ; Green, English People, 
I, 206-225. 



CHAPTER LV 



LEARNING AND ART IN THE FEUDAL AGE 



The "Dark Ages" saw a brief gleam of promise in the time of 
Charlemagne, and some remarkable Irish and English schools 
flourished in Alfred's day. But these were points of light in a 
vast gloom. On the whole, for six hundred years, the only 
schools were those connected with monasteries or cathedrals ; 
and these were unspeakably poor, — and aimed only to fit for 
the duties of the clergy. 

The best Cathedral schools claimed to teach the "seven 
liberal arts" of the ancient education (p. 382). They did 
teach students to talk a barbarous medieval sort of Latin, and 
gave some practice in writing it and in reasoning. This in- 
struction was a shrunken survival of the Roman trivium, 
language, rhetoric, and logic. Even slimmer was the pre- 
tense to teach the Roman quadrivium of sciences. As Dr. 
Munro has summed it up in his Middle Ages, — " In arithmetic 
the students were taught to keep simple accounts ; in music, 
what was necessary for the church services ; in geometry, a 
few of the simplest problems ; in astronomy, enough to calculate 
the date of Easter." There was no study of nature, and there 
were almost no textbooks. There was no inquiry and no 
criticism or discussion. The teacher dictated (in Latin) dry 
summaries, word by word. Students wrote these down and 
committed them to memory for recitation. 

About 1100, Europe began to stir from this intellectual 
torpor. Some of the neio towns set wp trades schools, with in- 
struction in the language of the people instead of in Latin, to 
fit for everyday life. And in the church schools, the teachers 
began to draw some real scholarship from Arabian universities 

554 



RISE OF MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITIES 



555 



and from the Greek learning that still lingered at Constanti- 
nople ; and here and there they ventured to add lectures on the- 
ology, medicine, lato, — until suddenly in Paris the Cathedral 
School of Notre Dame began to grow into the first medieval 
university when Peter Abelard taught there, about 1116. 

Abelard was from a noble family in Brittany, but he chose 
the life of a churchman rather than that of a knight. He was 
an attractive youth, with a brilliant and restless mind, and with 
the gift of simple and graceful speech. He came to the Paris 
school as a student; but his teachers soon declared him their 
master in learning and in eloquence, and at twenty-two he 
began to lecture to eager crowds on theology and philosophy 
and the principles of right living. A cruel disappointment in 
love, and the jealous hatred of rival teachers, drove him from 
Paris. Thousands of students followed him, however, from 
place to place ; and when he sought solitude for a time, as a 
hermit, they covered the desert about him with their reed huts, 
and heaped their offerings before his retreat. 

Such an experience proved that Europe was hungry for knowl- 
edge, if only it knew where to seek for it. The impulse Abelard 
had given to the school at Paris was not lost. Other teachers 
flocked thither, to satisfy the remaining students whom his 
fame had drawn together ; and soon a new body of teachers in 
theology and philosophy, as well as in the seven "arts," grew 
up about the Cathedral school, but wholly separate from it. 
Before 1150, several hundred "masters" were offering instruc- 
tion in the "Latin Quarter" of Paris. At first each taught 
students who came to him in his own dwelling, collecting his 
fees from them as best he could ; but about 1150, the masters 
organized, so as to confer degrees and to establish common rules. 
This marks the beginning of a definite " University of Paris," 
with a recognized " faculty." Before long, the university began 
to have buildings and lecture halls. 

The students ranged from boys of fourteen to gray-bearded 
men, and they came from all parts of Europe. Those from 
one country grouped themselves together for mutual protection 



Abelard 
and the 
University 
of Paris 



The Latin 
Quarter 



Students 
organ- 
ized in 
" nations 



556 



MEDIEVAL LEARNING 



A "Republic 
of Letters " 



and companionship ; and each such group became known as a 
"nation." A "nation," however, sometimes included students 
from several adjoining countries, — like the " English nation," 
which contained men from all the north of Europe. The 
government of the university was in the hands of the faculty ; but 
there was some self-government by the students. The nations 
and subdivisions elected "deans" and "proctors" to look after 
discipline. The university was a "Republic of Letters." 

When the teachers organized, they copied the form of the gilds 
(p. 550). The professors, or "doctors," were "masters." They 
licensed the more advanced students, after the completion of 
the course in "arts," as "bachelors in arts," authorized to 
teach the younger students in those courses from which they 
themselves had graduated. These bachelors, corresponded to 
the journeymen of the trade gilds, while the more elementary 
students corresponded to apprentices. The forms of public 
examination, and of graduation from one of these three stages 
to another, were copied, too, from gild customs. 

A university always had a course in "arts," based on the old 
trivium and quadrivium, and the majority of students went 
no further than this. But graduates of this course were offered 
one or more professional courses, — law, medicine, or theology. 
Paris, we have seen, specialized in theology (which included 
philosophy). The University of Salerno, in southern Italy, 
grew out of a monastery school, through the prominence that 
Constantine the African gave there to the study of medicine 
about 1100. Constantine was an African Greek, who had 
studied in Arabian universities ; and his school received a char- 
ter from Robert Guiscard.* About the same time, at Bologna, 
Irnerius, a teacher of Roman law, drew students from all Europe, 
and the University of Bologna was soon known as " the Mother 
of Laws." Thus it has been said that the needs of the body 
gave rise to Salerno, the needs of men in society created Bologna, 
and the eternal needs of the soul originated Paris. 

^ Robert " the Crafty" was a famous Norman adventurer who by con- 
quest had build a powerful state in South Italy. 



STUDENT LIFE 557 

All these early universities had grown up out of voluntary A " state 
associations of students and teachers, establishing certain rights "'^^^^'^^^ ^ 
and privileges for themselves by custom, and afterward getting 
these rights confirmed by charters from some ruler. The next 
great step was taken in 1224, when the Hohenstaufen Frederick 
II, as King of Sicily, created by charter the University of Naples, 
to combine all branches of instruction, " in order that those who 
hunger for knowledge may find within the kingdom the food for 
which they yearn, and not be forced to go into exile to beg the 
bread of learning in strange lands." The University of Naples 
was the first university created by a government. It was also dis- 
tinctly a "state university." The government appointed the 
professors, endowed chairs, and issued degrees in the different 
professions. Before 1400, some fifty universities dotted Western Fifty 
Europe. Some single institutions claimed to have twelve, or j^^ ^ 
even twenty, thousand students. For a long time, a university 
had little in the way of buildings. Thus it could move easily; 
and, by threats of doing so, it compelled its town to put up with 
much student turbulence. The great University of Padua did 
grow out of a secession from Bologna; and a like secession 
from Paris to Oxford in England first made that place a real 
university town. 

When the university did not move, the individual students Student life 
very commonly did. All medieval life — except that of the 
agricultural village — was fluid. Merchants, soldiers of for- 
tune, friars, journeymen, were always on the move ; but the poor 
scholar was the typical wanderer of them all, often begging his 
bread on his travels. Young men thought nothing of passing 
from Oxford to Paris or Bologna, to sit at the feet of some 
new famous teacher — and to see the world by the way ; and 
often they traveled in considerable bands, with much jollity 
and song and sometimes with much disorder. The fact that 
Latin was the language of all universities encouraged this 
freedom of movement. Public stage coaches grew up to meet 
the needs of student travel. 

Thus, before 1300, another figure had come into European 



558 



MEDIEVAL LEARNING 



life. Alongside peasant, knight, priest, and townsman (p. 544), 
there moved now the student (or learned "doctor") in cap and 
gown. The lay lawyers in England (p. 516) in Edward the 
First's day came from this new class, the forerunner of the 
modern "professional man." 

The universities failed, however, to make good their best 
promise. Abelard, the founder, was a fearless seeker for truth, 
and appealed to "reason" as man's guide. But the church 
condemned this heresy, so far as church doctrines at least were 
concerned, and drove the universities to live by "authority," 
instead of by "reason." Inquiry was stifled. Some garbled 
fragments of Greek science had been recovered, through 
Arabian translations from Aristotle (p. 231), and soon came to 
be looked upon with superstitious reverence. For two cen- 
turies, "Thus saith Aristotle" was final in all scientific dis- 
cussion. Some little astronomy and chemistry crept into Eu- 
rope by 1200 from the Arabs. But the astronomy was mostly 
astrology (p. 535). And chemistry (alchemy) was little more 
than a search for the "philosopher's stone" which should change 
common metals into gold, or for the elixir of life, a drink to 
make a man immortal. Both astrologers and alchemists, 
whether honest or quacks, were generally believed to have sold 
their souls to the devil in return for forbidden knowledge. 
When the intellectual rebirth of Europe came, a century later 
still, it came from outside university walls. 

The method of reasoning used in the universities is called 
scholasticism. It was like the reasoning we use in geometry, — 
deducing a truth from given premises or axioms. This method 
ignores observation and experiment and investigation, and has 
no value, by itself, except in mathematics. It has never dis- 
covered a truth in nature or in man. The men of the univer- 
sities (Schoolmen) did not use it in mathematics. They tried 
to use it by turning in upon their own minds, and their argu- 
ments were mainly quibbles upon verbal distinctions. Much 
time they spent in playing with such questions as, How many 
spirits can dance at one time upon the point of a needle. About 



ROGER BACON, PIONEER 559 

the year 1600, Francis Bacon (an English thinker) referred to 
the "degenerate learning" that "did reign among the School- 
men. ..." "For if the wit of men . . . work upon itself, 
as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless and bringeth 
forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of 
thread and work, but of no substance or profit." 

The last of the famous Schoolmen was Duns the Scot, who Duns and 
died in 1308. In that day there was no higher praise for a **"°'^® 
young scholar than to call him "a Duns." Some centuries 
later, when a true scientific method came in (p. 636), that term 
became our "dunce." 

No doubt there were many men, whose names we have never A fore- 
heard, who were trying through those weary centuries really "f""^®^ 
to study into the secrets of nature in a scientific way, by experi- science 
ment.' The greatest man of this kind before 1300 was Roger 
Bacon,^ an English Franciscan. While the useless Duns Scotus 
was admired and courted by all the world, Roger Bacon was 
living in loneliness and poverty, noticed only to be persecuted 
or reviled. He gave his life to point out the lacks of the School- 
men's method and to teach true scientific principles. Four- 
teen years he spent in dungeons, for his opinions. When at 
liberty, he worked devotedly, but under heavy handicaps. 
More than once he sought all over Europe for a copy of some 
book he needed — when a modern scholar in like case would 
need only to send a note to the nearest bookseller. He wrote 
upon the possibility of reaching Asia by sailing west into the 
Atlantic (p. 601). He learned much about explosives, and is 
said to have invented gunpowder. It is believed, too, that he 
used lenses as a telescope. Apparently he foresaw the possibil- 
ity of using steam as a motive power. Certainly he prophesied 
that in time wagons and ships would move "with incredible 
speed" without horses or sails, and also that man would learn to 
sail the air. His " Great Work" was a cyclopedia of the knowl- 
edge of his time in geography, mathematics, music, and physics. 

1 Roger Bacon must not be confused with Francis Bacon, his more famous 
but no more deserving countryman, of three centuries later. 



560 . MEDIEVAL LEARNING AND LITERATURE 



But Bacon lived at least a century too soon, and found no 
successful disciples. In 1258 Brunetto Latini, the tutor of Dante, 
visited Bacon and wrote as follows to a friend in Italy : 

" Among other things he showed me a black, ugly stone called a 
magnet, which has the surprising quality of drawing iron to it; and 
if a needle be rubbed upon it and afterward fastened to a straw, so that 
it will swim upon water, it will instantly turn to the pole star. . . . 
Therefore, be the night never so dark, neither moon nor stars visible, 
yet shall the sailor by help of this needle be able to steer his vessel 
aright. This discovery, so useful to all who travel by sea, must remain 
concealed until other times, because no master mariner dare use it, lest he 
fall under imputation of being a magician ; nor would sailors put to sea 
with one who carried an instrument so evidently constructed by the devil. 
A time may come when these prejudices, such hindrances to researches 
into the secrets of nature, will be overcome; and then mankind will 
reap benefits from the labor of such men as Friar Bacon, who now meet 
only with obloquy and reproach." 

Latin, a mongrel Latin, too, was the sole language of the 
university and of learning ; and, until 1200, except for the songs 
of wandering minstrels, it was the only language of any kind 
of literature. About that time, however, in various lands 
popular poetry of a high order began to appear in the tongues of 
everyday speech : the Song of the Cid in Spanish ; the love 
songs of the Troubadours in French and of the Minnesingers in 
German ; the Divine Comedy of Dante in Italian ; and, toward 
1400, the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer and Wyclif's translation 
of the Bible in the New English (fused of Saxon and Norman 
French) . 

Classical art was lost, through the Dark Ages, as completely 
as classical learning. Medieval painting existed only in rude 
altar pieces, representing stiff Madonnas and saints; and even 
the free use of flowing draperies could not hide the artist's 
ignorance of how to draw the human body. On a minute scale, 
to be sure, there was some better work. Monks "illuminated" 
missals with tiny brushes in brilliant colors, sometimes with 
beauty and delicacy. 

Architecture, too, was rude until after 1100. The style 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 



561 




Rheims Cathedral. — This supremely beautiful example of Gothic archi- 
tecture was wantonly injured by German shells in the World War. 



562 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 



was the Romanesque, based upon old Roman remains, and char- 
acterized by the round arch. But in the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, the Romanesque gave way to a new French style, 
called Gothic; and architecture, especially in churches and 
cathedrals, reached one of its greatest periods. 

At bottom, the change lay in a better way of carrying the weight 
of the huge stone roof. The early architects had done this by 
massive walls ; but they dared not weaken these by cutting out 
large windows, and the buildings were dark and gloomy. The 

architect of the twelfth 
century was a better en- 
gineer, and he invented 
two new devices to carry 
the roof. (1) He gathered 
its iveight at certain points 
— by using converging 
arches — instead of leav- 
ing the weight, as before, 
distributed equally along 
the whole length of the 
wall. And-he rested these 
arches, at the points of 
convergence, on groups of 
mighty pillars. (2) To 
help these pillars bear the 
immense burden, he added 
arched props (flying but- 
tresses) against the outside 
of the wall at the critical points. These met the side thrust of 
the roof's weight, and left only the direct vertical burden for 
the pillars. 

x\s a consequence of these changes in engineering, Gothic 
architecture changed the old round arch into a lighter, more 
varied, and more graceful pointed arch. It used the old Greek 
columns with greater freedom and variety, — since the columns 
now did the work of walls to so great a degree. Rounded 




Salisbury Cathedral. — A fine example 
of English Gothic, 1200-1250. The 
spire rises 404 feet from the ground. 
During the World War the magnificent 
elms of the close, always before a fea- 
ture in pictures of the cathedral, were 
cut for lumber. 



A MATTER OP ENGINEERING 



563 





6' "*■■ 


ii 


|. 


't 




ihLM 


M»>... .... , 




fv 


■ ■*' 


V 




\ 




■""\ 



Flying Buttresses from the upper wall 
of Norwich Cathedral. 



ceilings gave way to loftier and curiously vaulted ceilings, where Characteris- 
the ribs of converging arches intersected one another in in- ^^^^^^^^^ 
genious ways. The tower replaced the Roman dome ; and Gothic 
heaven-pointing spires were added, borrowed perhaps from the 
Saracens. The weight of 
the roof was so well cared 
for that it was safe now 
to pierce the walls with 
row on row and group 
after group of tall win- 
dows, giving the building 
an effect of lightness and 
complexity. New chances 
for ornament, too, were 
found in the tracery (open- 
ings in the stonework 
about doors and windows 

to reduce the weight), in the moldings of the many window 
frames, and in the use of stained glass — since there could 
now be windows enough to admit the necessary light even 
through darkened glass. Externally, the flying buttresses 
themselves were made into a strikingly beautiful architectural 

feature ; and ' the niches 
about the portals were filled 
with countless sculptured 
forms of saints. The gen- 
eral effect of the rough 
cathedral sculptures is im- 
posing, especially at a little 
distance ; but a close in- 
spection shows them vastly 
inferior to the marble-sculp- 
tured forms of athletes in 
which ancient art had de- 
lighted. The medieval workman carved in limestone or sand- 
stone. Still he made up, in a measure, for his lack of skill 




Cloisters of SALihBLK\ Cathedral. 



564 THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 

and for his poorer material by expressing a greater range of 
feeling and more of human life. Especially did he give full 
play to a rude humor — as when perhaps he carved a monkey 
on a monk's back, clinging to his ears, or when he formed the 
quaint gargoyles through which the gutters of cathedral roofs 
discharged rain water. 

The total result was a new architecture, so different from the 
older styles as to permit no comparison. Gothic architecture 
is the most perfect product of the Middle Ages, and a Gothic 
cathedral is one of the world's treasures. Such buildings were 
the finest expression of the life of their time. They were 
"religious aspirations in stone." 



PART VIII 
PEOM THE OEUSADES TO THE EEPOEMATION 



CHAPTER LVI 

ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 1300-1520 

We left the story of England with the great Edward who had The 
had the wisdom to adopt and perfect the Parliament of the ^^"'^^y®^ 
glorious rebel Simon. In 1327 Parliament deposed the weak War, 1338- 
second Edward. Then Edward III began the Hundred Years' ^"^^^ 
War with France. On the surface, the war was a struggle be- 
tween kings for prestige and territory ; but at bottom it was a 
commercial struggle. Every country in that day shackled 
foreign merchants with absurd restrictions and ruinous tariffs. 
English merchants wanted to sell their wool freely in Flemish 
towns and to buy the Bordeaux wines freely in the south of 
France ; and the easiest way to get access to French markets 
seemed to be to conquer France. 

The war was waged on French soil. The English won bril- France 
liant victories, overran France repeatedly, ravaging peasant devastated 
crops and burning peasant homes in the usual fashion of " chiv- 
alrous" warfare, and bringing home much plunder. "No 
woman," boasts an English chronicler, "but had robes, furs, 
featherbeds, and utensils, from French cities." The whole 
century of meaningless slaughter had just one gleam of promise 
for the future world — in the Battle of Crecy. An English Battle of 
army was trapped by five times its number. But the English ^'"^'^y- ^34o 
yeomen — men of the six-foot-bow and yard-long shaft feathered 
with gray-goose wing — coolly faced the ponderous mass of 

565 



566 



ENGLAND, 1300-1500 



French knights, repulsed charge after charge of the gallantest 
chivalry of Europe, and won back for the world the long-lost 
equality of footman with horseman in war. 

For a time toward 1400 the war languished because pesti- 
lence was slaying men faster than steel could. The "Black 
Death," most famous of famous plagues, had been devastating 
the Continent for years, moving west from Asia. In the. year 




English Family Dinner. — From a fourteenth century manuscript. 
Note the dogs, the musicians, and the barefooted monk, at whom the 
jester is directing some witticism. 



after Crecy, the victors brought it to England, and almost at a 
blow it swept away half the nation. 

The loss fell most heavily, of course, on the working classes ; 
but it helped those left alive to rise out of serfdom, — a movement 
already under way in England. The lack of labor, too, doubled 
wages, and brought in a higher standard of living. 

True, Parliament tried, in the interest of the landlords, to 
keep down the laborers by foolish and tyrannical laws, — for- 



THE BLACK DEATH 



567 



bidding them to leave the parish where they Uved or to take 
more wages than had been customary in the past, and ordering 
them under cruel penalties to serve any one who offered them 
such wages. But when a landlord was anxious to harvest a 
standing crop, he did not dare try to take advantage of such 
laws. Instead, to keep 
his old serfs from running 
away to other landlords, 
he made more and more 
favorable terms with them, 
and gradually allowed them 
to exchange all their per- 
sonal services for a fixed 
rent in money. 

In the latter part of 
Edward's long reign, how- 
ever, the peasants were 
stirred by bitter discon- 
tent. The change from 
serfdom to freedom had 
begun even before the 
Black Death. That event 
hastened it; but still it 
was spread over a century. 
This seems swift, to a stu- 
dent ages later; but to 
the suffering laborers of 
that century — father, son, 
grandson, great-grandson — it was terribly slow. Each gain 
made them doubly impatient with the burdens that remained. 
They felt, too, many cases of bitter hardship and tyranny, — 
where a lord, by legal trickery or by downright violence, forced 
half -freed villeins back again to serfdom. 

Another set of causes added to this smoldering discontent. 
The growing wealth of the church in England, and the world li- 
ness of the great churchmen, were becoming a common scandal. 




Smoldering 
discontent 
of the 
peasants 



A Bombard. — From a sixteenth-century 
German woodcut. An old chronicler 
tells us that at Crecy the English had 
some small "bombards," " which, with 
fire and noise like God's thunder, threw 
little iron balls to frighten the ho7-ses." 
These first cannon were made by 
fastening bars of iron together with 
hoops ; and the powder was very weak. 
A century later they began to be used 
to batter down castles and city walls. 
It was longer still before firearms re- 
placed the bow for infantry. 



568 



ENGLAND, 1300-1500 



The famous and gentle Chaucer, a court poet, indulged in keen 
raillery toward these faults.^ More serious men could not 
dismiss them with a jest. John Wyclif, a famous lecturer at 
the University of Oxford, preached vigorously against such 
abuses, and finally attacked sorne of the church doctrines. 
He denied the doctrine of transubstantiation (p. 495), and he 
insisted that even ignorant men might know the will of God, 

through the Bible, without the 
aid of a priest. Accordingly, 
with his companions, he made 
the first complete translation 
of the Bible into English ; and 
his disciples wrote out many 
copies and distributed them 
throughout the land. 

These disciples called them- 
selves " poor preachers." Their 
enemies called them " Lollards" 
(babblers). Some of them ex- 
aggerated their master's teach- 
ings against wealth, and called 
for the abolition of all rank and 
property. John Ball, one of 
the "mad preachers," attacked 
the privileges of the gentry in rude rhymes that rang through 
England from shore to shore, — 

"When Adam delved and Eve span. 
Who was then the gentleman?" 

"This priest," says Froissart, a contemporary chronicler, "used 
oftentimes to go and preach when the people in the villages were com- 
ing out from mass ; and he would make them gather about him, and 
would say thus : ' Good people, things go not well in England, nor will, 
till everything be in common and there no more be villeins and gentle- 
men. ■ By what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than we? 

1 Illustrations may be found in the descriptions of the monk, the prioress, 
the friar, and the pardoner, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 




John Wyclif. 



THE PEASANT RISING OF 1381 



569 



We be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve, . . . 
but they are clothed in velvet and are warm in their furs, while we shiver 
in rags ; they have wine, and spices, and fair bread ; and we, oat cake 
and straw, and water to drink ; they dwell in fine houses, and we have 
the pain and travail, the rain and the wind in the fields. From our 
labor they keep their state. Yet we are their bondmen ; and unless 
we serve them readily, we are beaten.' Aijd so the people would 
murmur one with the other in the fields, and in the ways as they met 
together, affirming that John Ball spoke truth." 




An English Carriage of the Fourteenth Century. — After Jusserand's 
English Wayfaring Life; from a fourteenth-century psalter. This 
carriage is represented as drawn by five horses tandem, driven by two 
postilions. Such a carriage was a princely luxury, equaling in value a 
herd of from four hundred to sixteen hundred oxen. 



In 1377 Edward's grandson/ Richard II, came to the throne The 



Peasant 
Rising of 
1381 



as a mere boy; and while the government was in confusion, 
and England in this seething discontent. Parliament passed a 
heavy poll tax, bearing unfairly upon the poor. This match 
set the realm ablaze — in the Peasant Rising of 1381. With 
amazing suddenness the peasants, rudely armed, marched upon 
London; and in a few days king and kingdom were in their 
hands. 

The special demand of the peasantry was that all labor-rents Demands 
should be changed into fixed money rents. They sacked some pg^Jnts 

1 The following table will show the succession of English kings for the 
rest of this chapter ; also the conflicting claims that will call for attention 
on p. 575. 



570 



-ENGLAND AND THE PEASANT RISING 



castles and manor houses, destroying the "manor rolls," the 
written evidence of services due on the estate ; and they put to 
death a few nobles and their lawyer tools. Women and children 
were nowhere injured, and there was no attempt at general 
pillage and massacre, such as usually go with servile insurrec- 
tions in other lands. ^ The revolt was marked by the moderation 
of men who had a reasonable program of reform. 

Unhappily the peasants lacked organization. Their chief 
leader, Wat the Tyler, was murdered treacherously, in a con- 
ference — "under a flag of truce," as we would say. "Kill!" 
shouted Wat's followers; "they have murdered our captain!" 
But the young Richard rode forward fearlessly to their front. 
" What need ye, my masters ! " he called ; " I am your king and 
captain." "We will that you free us forever," shouted the 
peasant army, " us and our lands ; and that we be never more 
named serfs." "I grant it," replied the boy; and by such 
pledges and by promise of free pardon he persuaded them to go 
home. For days a force of thirty clerks was kept busy writing 
out brief charters containing the king's promises. 

(1) Edward III (1327-1377) 



Edward 

the Black Prince 

(d. 1376) 



Lionel 



Philippa 



(2) Richard II (1377-1399) 
(deposed) 



John of Gaunt 

Duke of 
LANCASTER 



Edmund, Duke 
of YORK 



(3) Henry IV (1399-1413) 

(4) Henry V (1413-1422) 



Roger 

Earl of March (5) Henry VI (1422-1461) 
I (deposed) 



Anne= 



^Richard 



Richard, Duke of York 



(6) Edward IV 
(1461-1483) 

(7) Edward V 

(1483) 



(8) Richard III 
(1483-1485) 



^ Conan Doyle's White Company gives a vivid picture of a French 
Jacquerie. 



THE END OF ENGLISH SERFDOM 571 

But when the peasants had scattered to their villages, bear- The upper- 
ing to each one a copy of the king's treacherous charter, the tj-eacherv 
property classes rallied and took a bloody vengeance. Parlia- and revenge 
ment declared, indeed, that Richard's promise was void, because 
he could not give away the gentry's property — the services 
due them — without their consent. Richard caught gladly at 
this excuse. Quite willing to dishonor his word to mere villeins, 
he marched triumphantly through England at the head of forty 
thousand men, stamping out all hope of another rising by ruth- 
less execution of old leaders. Seven thousand men were put 
to death in cold blood. The men of Essex met him with copies 
of his charters, declaring that they were free Englishmen. 
"Villeins you were," answered Richard, "and villeins you are. 
In bondage you shall abide ; and not your old bondage, but a 
worse." 

History has preserved a splendid story of one of the martyred Grinde- 
heroes. Early in the rising, the peasants of St. Albans (in ^ero and 
Essex) had wrung charters from the monastery which had martyr 
previously owned their town — in so legal a way that now even 
the royal courts could not ignore them. The leader of the St. 
Albans' villagers, Grindecobbe, was now condemned to death, 
for his part in the rising, and was then offered his life if 
he would persuade his townsmen to give up the charters. 
Grindecobbe turned to his fellows only to bid them take no 
thought for him but to hold firm their rights. "I shall die for 
the freedom we have won, counting myself happy to end my life 
by such a martyrdom. Do then as if I had been killed in battle 
yesterday." 

Such steadfastness was not in vain. Soon the movement The peasant 
toward the emancipation of villeins began again with fresh force ; '^^'^ ® ^ 
and, by 1450, villeinage had passed away from England forever. 

The growth of Parliament during the Hundred Years' War Growth of 

was almost as important as the rise of the peasants out of bond- jjjgnti" 

age. Constant war made it necessary for Edward HI and power 
his successors to ask for many grants of money. Parliament 



572 



El*JGLAND, 1300-1500 



supplied the king generously ; but it took advantage of his needs 
to secure new powers. 

(1) It established the principle that "redress of grievances" 
must precede a "grant of supply," and at last transformed its 
"petitions" for such redress into "bills." (2) In the closing 
years of Edward III the Good Parliament (1376) "impeached" 
and removed his ministers, using the forms that have been com- 
mon in impeachments ever since in English-speaking countries. 




The Parliament of 1399, which deposed Richard II. — From a con- 
temporary manuscript. Some of the faces are probably portraits. 

(3) When Richard II tried to overawe Parliament with his soldiery, 
England rose against him, and the Parliament of 1399 deposed 
him, electing a cousin (Henry of Lancaster) in his place. (4) In 
the first quarter of the fifteenth century, under the Lancastrian 
Henrys (IV, V, VI), the House of Commons made good its 
claims that all money bills must originate with it (not in the 
upper House), and (5) secured the right to judge of the election 
of its own members. (6) Parliament repeatedly compelled 
the king to dismiss his ministers and appoint new ones satis- 
factory to it, and (7) several times fixed the succession to the 



THE "LIBERTIES OF ENGLISHMEN" 573 

throne. (8) Freedom of speech in Parhament and freedom 

from arrest, except by the order of Parhament itself, became 

recognized privileges of ah members. 

Thus under the Lancastrians there was estabhshed in the The 

breasts of the Enghsh middle classes a proud consciousness of V^^^^^ll^f 
'^ . *^ of English- 

"the liberties of Englishmen" as a precious inheritance. With men" 
right they believed their freedom superior to that possessed by 
any other people of the time. Wrote Sir John Fortescue, Chief 
Justice under Henry VI, in his In Praise of the Laws of England, 
for the instruction of Henry's son : 

"A king of England at his pleasure cannot make any alteration in 
the laws of the land without the consent of his subjects, nor burden 
them against their wills with strange impositions. . . . Rejoice, there- 
fore, my good Prince, that such is the law of the kingdom you are to in- 
herit, because it will afford both to you and to your subjects the greatest 
security and satisfaction. . . . [The king] is appointed to protect his 
subjects in their lives, properties, and laws. For this end he has the 
delegation of power from the people, and he has no just claims to any 
other power." 

After twenty-five years of peace, Henry V of England, the Henry V 

second Lancastrian king (p. 572), renewed the war with France. ^^^^"^^ "^^ 
o^\f /J ^ vfaT, 1415 

That land was in confusion, under the rule of a crazy king, and 
Henry won swift successes. An English victory at Agincourt Agincourt 
recalled the day of Crecy ; and Henry's infant son (afterward 
Henry VI of England) was crowned King of France at Paris 
with the assent of a vast assembly of French nobles. 

But the English triumph was brief. The long struggle was Joan of Arc 
forcing the peoples of France into a feeling of nationality; 
and an unschooled peasant girl, Joan of Arc, inspired by this 
new patriotism, freed her country. Joan saw "visions," and 
thought that divine voices called her to her task. With great 
difficulty she secured a small body of troops with which she 
promised to relieve Orleans. The English had nearly reduced 
that place to surrender, and it was the last French strong- 
hold in the northern half of the kingdom. Joan's victory 
was marvelous — and, her followers believed, miraculous. The 



574 



ENGLAND AND FRANCE, 1300-1500 



French people then rose in one mass to follow the "Holy- 
Maid of Orleans," and swept away the invaders. Victory 
followed victory, until the English lost all France except Calais. 

Then the war died out, 
because England became 
involved in civil wars at 
home. 

Meantime, however, 
Joan fell into English 
hands, and was tried and 
burned as a witch, — one 
of the darkest stains in all 
the bloody pages of medi- 
eval history. Joan's gentle 
firmness and purity, and 
her steadfast endurance 
even in the flames, con- 
founded her persecutors. 
"We are lost," exclaimed 
one of them ; " we have 
burned a saint!" The 
superstitious cruelty of the 
English deserves no more 
reproach than the baseness with which the French king and 
court deserted Joan, jealous of her popularity, without an effort 
to save her. History has placed her foremost among all French 
heroes ; and at last, in May of 1920, she has been canonized by 
Pope Benedict XV. Says a famous French historian, — French 
patriotism " blossomed in Joan of Arc, and sanctified itself with 
the perfume of a miracle." 



4r- , ^■"■^^ 


1 
■i 


Ham 















Joan of Arc at Orleans, — a mod- 
ern painting. 



France came out of the war, after unspeakable suffering 
among the poor and vast destruction of property, with terri- 
tory consolidated, and her kings stronger than ever. Not 
for the last time, her industrious peasantry amazed Europe by 
their rapid restoration of prosperity in a wasted land. Louis XI 



WARS OF THE ROSES 



575 



(1461-1483) kept a small but efficient standing army, with a 
train of artillery that could easily batter down the castle of any 
feudal rebel. After long and disgraceful intrigue, he added to 
his realms Provence and Burgundy,^ and he left France the 
richest, most orderly, most united country in Europe, — so 
that with the long reign of Francis I (1515-1547) she stepped 
into political leadership. 

We said that England withdrew from the French war 
because of war within her own realm. In 1422 Henry VI 
became king, while less 
than a year old. His long 
minority gave time for 
factions to grow among 
the nobles ; and when he 
was old enough to as- 
sume the government, he 
proved too weak and 
gentle to restore order. 
The misrule of the great 
lords caused wide discon- 
tent, especially among the 
rising towns, whose indus- 
tries called for settled gov- 
ernment ; and, encouraged by this discontent, the Duke of York 
(table, p. 570) came forward to claim the crown. Thus began 
the Wars of the Iloses,^ to last from 1454 to 1471. 

This civil war was not, despite Shakspere's pictures of it, The Wars 
merely a struggle for power between rival lords : in large measure ° 
it was the final battle between the old feudal spirit, strong in the 1454-1471 
north of England, and the towns, strong in the south. The 
towns won. The remnants of the old nobility were swept away 

1 Read this story in Scott's Anne of Geierslein. 

2 The Yorkists assumed a white rose as their badge ; the Lancastrians, a 
red rose. Students may be asked to find the scene in Shakspere's Henry VI 
regarding the choice of these symbols. Stevenson's Black Arrow is an ad- 
mirable story for a boy, and Bulwer's Last of the Barons is the most famous 
novel dealing with the age. 




Guy's Tower, — the Keep of Warwick 
Castle. The Earl of Warwick (the King- 
maker) was a prominent leader in the 
Wars of the Roses. 



576 



ENGLAND UNDER TUDOR KINGS 



in battle or by the headsman's ax. But the middle classes were 
not yet ready to grasp the government, and the fruits of victory 
fell for a time to the new Tudor monarchs, Henry VII^ and Henry 
VIII. These rulers were more absolute than any preceding 




A Medieval Battle, — from a sixteenth century woodcut reproduced by 

Parmentier. 

The "New English kings. England entered the modern period under a 

Monarchy" "New Monarchy." 

Tudors Still these Tudor s were not "divine-right" monarchs; and they 

were shrewd enough to cloak their power under the old con- 
stitutional forms — and so did not challenge popular opposition. 
True, they called Parliament rarely — and only to use it as a 



> Henry VII, a distant relative of the Lancastrians, overthrew the tyrant 
Richard III (table, 570). 



NEW MONARCHY 



577 



tool. But the occasional meetings, and the way in which the The forms 

kings seemed to rule through it, saved the forms of constitutional °^ ^^^^ 

° . . government 

government. At a later time, we shall see, life was again saved 

breathed into those forms. Then it became plain that, in 

crushing the feudal forces, the New Monarchy had paved the 

way for a parliamentary government more complete than men 

had dreamed of in earlier times. 



For Further Reading. — Green's History of the English People and 
his Short History continue to be the most desirable of all general narr&,- 
tives for England, and Adams' Growth of the French Nation for France. 
On the Hundred Years^ War, the student will enjoy the contemporary 
story of Froissart, especially in Lanier's Boy's Froissart. On the Black 
Death, see Jessopp's Coming of the Friars, ch. iv. Fiction has been 
mentioned in footnotes, but Samuel Clemens' ("Mark Twain") Joan 
of Arc is more than ordinary fiction, and should be read by all students. 



CHAPTER LVII 



OTHER EUROPEAN STATES, 1300-1520 

The Papacy The thirteenth century conflict between popes and emperors 
(ch. Hi) left the popes victorious. But at once in France and 
England the new national patriotism had begun to rebel against 
papal authority in temporal matters. Neither people nor 
kings questioned the spiritual authority of the pope ; but they 
did demand that he should not interfere with their government. 

The conflict was hastened by the Hundred Years' War. 
The kings needed money, and were trying to introduce sys- 
tems of national taxation in the place of the unsatisfactory 
feudal revenues. The clergy had been exempt from feudal 
services ; but they owned so much of the wealth of the two 
countries that the kings insisted upon their paying their share 
of the new taxes. Po-pe Boniface VIII (1296) issued a bull 
forbidding any prince to impose taxes on the clergy without 
papal consent, and threatening excommunication against all 
clergy who paid. 

But when the English clergy, trusting in this papal decree, 
refused to pay taxes, Edward I outlawed them. To outlaw 
a man was to put him outside the protection of the law : he 
could not bring suit to recover property or damages, and 
offenses against him were not "crimes." In comparison with 
this practical "excommunication" by the state, the old clerical 
excommunication was stage thunder. The clergy paid. 

France was the scene of a still sharper contest. As it pro- 
gressed, Boniface set forth the old claims of papal supremacy 
over princes. "Whoever resists this power," said one of his 
bulls, "resists the ordination of God. . . . Indeed we de- 
clare . . . that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every 

578 



THE PAPACY AT AVIGNON 579 

human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." King 
Philip IV treated these claims with contempt ; and the Estates 
General (1302), even the clerical Estate, pledged their lives to de- 
fend the " ancient liberties of the French nation. " Philip forbade 
the payment of any revenues from his realm to the pope, and 
arrested the papal legate. Boniface threatened to depose the 
king. A few days later, a company of French soldiers made 
Boniface prisoner ; and the chagrin of the old man at the insult 
probably hastened his death (1303). 

Philip then secured the election of a French pope, who removed The pope at 
the papal capital from Rome to Avignon, in southern France. i7oo-i377 
Here the popes remained for seventy years, in " the Babylonian 
Captivity of the church." Politically they sank into mere 
tools of the French kings, and the enemies of France could not 
be expected to show them reverence. In Italy, too, the Papal 
States fell into anarchy, in the absence of their ruler, and there 
was danger that the popes might lose that principality. 

In 1377, to save the papal territory, Gregory XI visited Rival 

Rome. This act brought on a greater disaster even than the pop^s ' 
. . at Rome 

exile itself. Gregory died while at Rome. The cardinals were and 

obliged at once to choose a successor. They were Frenchmen ^'^gi^o'^ 
(as all high church offices had been given to Frenchmen during 
the scandal of the Captivity) ; but even French cardinals did 
not dare disregard the savage demands of the people of Rome 
for an Italian pope, and so they chose Urban VI. Urban estab- 
lished himself in the old papal seat at Rome ; but, a few 
months later, the cardinals assembled again, declared that 
the choice of Urban was void because made under compulsion, 
and elected a French pope, Clement VII, who promptly re- 
turned to Avignon. 

Urban and Clement excommunicated each other, each 
devoting to the devil all the supporters of the other. Which 
pope should good Christians obey? The answer was deter- 
mined mainly by political considerations. France obeyed 
Clement ; England and Germany obeyed Urban. Two such 
heads for Christendom were worse than no head at all. 



580 THE PAPACY, 1300-1500 

The Lollard This sad condition of the papacy brought with it danger to 
the church itself. The Wyclif movement in England (p. 568) 
took place toward the close of the exile at iVvignon. The 
church declared Wyclif a heretic ; but he was protected during 
his life by one of King Edward's sons. Soon after Wyclif 's 
death, however, the Lancastrian monarchs began to persecute 
his followers. In 1401, for the first time, an Englishman was 

The Hussite burned for heresy, and the Lollards finally disappeared. But 
eresy meantime, the seeds of the heresy had been scattered in a 

distant part of Europe. Richard II of England married a prin- 
cess of Bohemia, and some of her attendants carried the teach- 
ings of Wyclif to the Bohemian University of Prague. About 
1400, John Hus, a professor at Prague, became a leader in 
a radical "reform" much after Wyclif 's example, and the 
movement spread rapidly over much of Bohemia. 

The Council Great and good men everywhere, especially in the powerful 

of Con- universities, began now to call for a General Council as the only 

means to restore unity of church government and doctrine ; and 
finally one of the popes called the Council of Constance (1414). 
Five thousand delegates were present, representing all Chris- 
tendom. With recesses, the Council sat for four years. It 
induced one pope to resign his office, and it deposed the other 
claimants. Then it restored unity by electing a new pope, 
Martin V, to rule from Rome. 

Next the Council turned its attention to restoring church 
doctrine. John Hus was present, under a "safe conduct" 
from the emperor. His teachings were declared heresy; but 
neither persuasion nor threats could move him to recant. "It 
is better for me to die," he said, "than to fall into the hands 
of the Lord by deserting the truth." Despite the emperor's 
solemn pledge for his safety, Hus was burned at the stake, 
and his ashes were scattered in the Rhine (1415). Then Wyclif 's 
doctrines, too, were condemned ; and, to make thorough work, 
his ashes were disinterred from their resting place and scattered 
on the river Swift. 

The Council was made up of earnest reformers, — good men 



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HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 1300-1500 581 

for their age, — who beUeved that in this work they were serving 
God and saving the souls of future generations of men from 
eternal torment. But their vigorous measures did not wholly 
succeed. Hus became a national hero to Bohemia. That coun- 
try rose in arms against the church. A crusade was preached 
against the heretics, and years of cruel war followed ; but some 
survivals of Hussite teachings lasted on into the period of the 
Reformation a century later. 

The papacy never regained its earlier authority over kings. 
Nicholas V (1447) showed himself a learned scholar, eager to 
advance learning, as well as a pure and gentle man. Pius II 
(1455) strove to arouse a new crusade against the Turks, who 
had at last captured Constantinople ; but his complete failure 
proved (in his own words) that Europe "looked on pope and 
emperor alike as names in a story." Some of the succeeding 
popes, like the notorious Borgia (Alexander VI, 1492-1503), 
were busied mainly as Italian princes, building up their temporal 
principality by intrigue and craft such as was common at that 
day in Italian politics. 

The "Holy Roman Empire" had come to mean merely Germany 
Germany (p. 531); but the anarchy of the "Fist-law" period fj'^ *^® 
was checked in 1273 by the election of Rudolph of Hapsburg as 
emperor. Rudolph was a petty count of a rude district in the 
Alps ("Hawk's nest"), and the princes had chosen him because 
they thought him too weak to rule them. The king of Bo- 
hemia, indeed, refused to recognize his overlordship at all. 
Rudolph attacked Bohemia, and seized from it the duchy of 
Austria, which, until just now, has remained the chief seat of 
the Hapsburgs. In other ways he showed the now-familiar 
Hapsburg zeal to widen his personal domain. " Sit firm on Thy 
throne, O Lord," prayed an angry bishop, "or the Count of 
Hapsburg will shove Thee off." At the same time Rudolph 
gave earnest attention to restoring order, so far as his power 
permitted. Along the Rhine alone he demolished 140 robber 
castles, and he once hung 29 robber knights at one execution. 



582 SPAIN TO 1500 

After Rudolph's death, the princes of the Empire (the Elec- 
toral College) passed the throne from family to family — until, 
in 1438, after a long line of Bohemian rulers, the imperial dig- 
nity came back to the Hapsburgs by the election of Albert, 
Duke of Austria. From this time, so long as the title endured, 
the "Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire" was of the House of 
Austria, and election became a form only. 

The last medieval emperor was Maximilian I (1493-1519), 
the one romantic hero of the Hapsburg race. He made a noble 
effort to bring Germany abreast of England and France, but 
failed utterly, because of the selfishness of the German nobles ; 
and Germany entered the Modern Age a loose confederacy of many 
petty sovereign states grouped about Austria. 

The Mohammedan invasion of 711 (p. 455) separated the 
development of SpoAn from that of the rest of Europe. For 
centuries, "Africa began at the Pyrenees." The wave of 
Moorish invasion, however, left unconquered a few resolute 
Christian chiefs in the remote fastnesses of the northwestern 
mountains, and in these districts several little Christian prin- 
cipalities began the long task of winning back their land, crag 
by crag and stream by stream. This they accomplished in 
eight hundred years of war, — a war at once patriotic and re- 
ligious, Spaniard against African, and Christian against Infidel. 
The long struggle left the Spanish race proud, brave, warlike, 
unfitted for industrial civilization, intensely patriotic, and 
blindly devoted to the church. 

During the eight centuries of conflict, the Christian states 
spread gradually to the south and east, — waxing, fusing, 
splitting up into new states, uniting in kaleidoscopic combina- 
tions by marriage and war, — until, before 1400, they had 
formed the three countries, Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. 
Nearly a century later, the marriage of Isabella of Castile and 
Ferdinand of Aragon united the two larger states, and in 1492 
their combined power captured Granada, the last Moorish 
stronghold. In the year that Columbus discovered America 



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TURKS WIN CONSTANTINOPLE 583 

under Spanish auspices, Spain at home achieved national union 
and national independence. 

The feudal lords of the many Spanish kingdoms had been 
notably independent of the monarchs. In each petty state 
they elected the king — and took an oath to obey him in forms 
like this : " We, who are each of us as good as thou, swear to 
obey thee if thou dost obey our laws, and if not, not." The 
towns, too, had won remarkable charters, and in the various 
kingdoms they sent representatives to the assembly of Estates, 
or the "Cortes," a century before a like practice began in 
England. But Ferdinand of Aragon began to abridge all these . 
privileges, and during the next two reigns, the Spanish monarchy, 
financed by the treasures of Mexico and Peru, became the most 
absolute in Europe. 

While the civilized Mohammedan Moors were losing Spain, The Turks 

barbarous Mohammedan Turks were qaininq southeastern Eur one- ^"^^°"*^" 

■^ ^ ^ eastern 

They established themselves on the European side of the Helles- Europe 
pont first in 1346. Constantinople held out for a century more, 
a Christian island encompassed by seas of Mohammedanism. 
But at Kossova (1389), the Turks completed the overthrow of 
the Serbs, and a few years later a crushing defeat was inflicted 
upon the Hungarians and Poles. In 1453, Mahomet the Con- 
queror entered Constantinople through the breach where the 
heroic Constantine Palaeologus, last of the Greek emperors, 
died sword in hand. 

The Turks, incapable of civilization, always remained a hostile 
army encamped among subject Christian populations, whom 
their rule blighted. From 1453 to 1919, Constantinople re- 
mained the capital of their empire. That empire continued to 
expand for a century more (until about 1550), and for a time it 
seemed as though nothing could save Western Europe. Venice 
on sea, and Hungary by land, were long the two chief outposts 
of Christendom, and, almost unaided, they kept up ceaseless 
warfare to check the Mohammedan invaders. For a time, 
Hungary was conquered, and then Austria became the bulwark 



584 



THE GROWTH OF SWITZERLAND 



for Western Europe. Even as late as 1683 Vienna itself was 
besieged, and was saved from the Mohammedans only by the 
hurried march of John Sobieski, the hero-king of Poland. 

A chief factor in the early success of the Turk was the horrible 
"tribute of children" — a device more ingeniously fiendish than 
even the German deportations from Belgium and France during 
the recent World War. A fixed proportion of the strongest and 
most promising boys among the conquered Christian nations 
were carried off each year and brought up in the Mohammedan 
faith. Out of them were formed the famous Janissaries, 
who for centuries made the core of the Ottoman armies. 
The strength of the conquered peoples was turned against them- 
selves. 

Switzerland began to grow into a political state just before 
the year 1300. The brave and sturdy peasantry, in their 
mountain fastnesses, had preserved much of the old Teutonic 
independence. Some small districts (cantons) in the German 
Alps had belonged to the Hapsburg counts. When Rudolph 
of Hapsburg became duke of distant Austria (p. 581), he left 
these possessions to subordinate officers. These agents op- 
pressed the Swiss by extortion and tyranny ; and, in 1S94, the 
three "Forest Cantons" — Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden^ 
formed a "perpetual league" for mutual defense against 
tyranny. For two centuries, from time to time, the Haps- 
burgs invaded Switzerland with powerful armies, in order to 
reduce the mountaineers to subjection ; and very soon the league 
against oppression by the lord's agents became a league for inde- 
pendence, against the lord himself. Freedom was established 
by two great victories, — Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1386), 
— struggles to which belong the myths of William Tell and of 
Arnold of Winkelried. Between these two battles, other can- 
tons rebelled against their lords and joined the alliance. The 
new members — among them Bern, Zurich, and Luzern — were 
small city-states, wealthier and more aristocratic than the 
original cantons. The union remained a loose confederacy, to 
manage foreign wars, until the French Revolution. 



THE GROWTH OF SWITZERLAND 



585 




586 



MEDIEVAL SCANDINAVIA 



Except for the ninth century invasions and for the brief 
empire of Knut (p. 501), Scandinavia hardly touched the life 
of the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages ; but the northern 
lands themselves had a romantic history. The very names of 
the Norse kings make a portrait gallery — Eric Broadax, Hakon 
the Good, Hakon the Old, Olaf the Thickset, Olaf the Saint. 
In 1397 the three, kingdoms, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, 
were united under Queen Margaret of Denmark by the Treaty 
of Kalmar. Each country was to keep its own laws and govern- 
ment; but for foreign affairs, the three joined in "perpetual 
union." In practice this "Union" made the northern states 
dependencies of Denmark. Sweden soon established her inde- 
pendence again under her hero king, Gustavus Vasa. Norway 
remained dependent but restless until modern times. 



The Netherlands (Low Countries) did not form an independ- 
ent state in the Middle Ages. They were made up of a group 
of provinces, part of them fiefs of the Empire, part of them 
French fiefs. The southern portion has become modern Bel- 
gium ; the northern part, modern' Holland. The land is a low 
level tract, and in the Middle Ages it was more densely packed 
with teeming cities than any other part of Europe. 

The inhabitants were a sturdy, independent, slow, industrious, 
persistent people. Ghent claimed eighty thousand citizens 
able to bear arms, while Ypres is said to have employed two 
hundred thousand people in the weaving of cloth. Wealth so 
abounded that the " counts " of this little district excelled most 
of the kings of Europe in magnificence. Many of the citie?, 
like Rotterc^am and Amsterdam, were built on land wrested 
from the sea by dikes, and they took naturally to commerce. 
In their markets, the merchants from Italy and the south of 
Europe exchanged wares with the Hansa merchants of the 
Baltic. And the Netherland towns were workshops even more 
than they were trading rooms. " Nothing reached their shores," 
says one historian, " but received a more perfect finish : what 
was coarse and almost worthless, became transmuted into 



THE NETHERLANDS 



587 



something beautiful and good." Matthew of Paris/ a thirteenth 
century EngHsh chronicler, exclaimed that "the whole world 
was clothed in English wool manufactured in Flanders." 

The need of English wool for the Flemish looms made Flan- 
ders the ally of England in the Hundred Years' War. During 
this period the dukes of Burgundy became masters of Flanders. 
When Louis XI of France (p. 575) seized the rest of Burgundy 




Hall of the Clothmakers' Gild at Ypres. — Begun, 1200 ; finished, 
1364 ; destroyed by the Germans in the World War. 

from its last duke, Charles the Bold, the Flemish towns wisely 
chose to remain faithful to Mary, the daughter of Charles. 
In return for their fidelity, an Estates General of the prov- 
inces secured from Princess Mary a grant of The Great Privilege, 
the "Magna Carta of the Netherlands" (1478). This docu- 
ment promised : (1) that the provinces might hold Diets at will 
— composed, as before, of nobles and elected burgesses ; (2) that 
no new tax should be imposed but by the central Diet, the 
"Estates General"; (3) that no war should be declared but 



1 The name, Matthew of Paris, signifies that this English monk had 
studied at the University of Paris. 



588 



RISE OF MONARCHIC STATES 



by the consent of that body ; (4) that offices should be filled by 
natives only ; and (5) that Dutch should be the official language. 
Mary married the young Maximilian of Hapsburg (p. 582), 
and the Netherlands passed to the House of Austria. Ere long 
they were to wage one of the most famous of wars, to save these 
liberties. 



The rise of "monarchic states" is the political change that 
marks the close of the Middle Ages. At the moment it seemed 
a disaster to many great and good men, like the Italian Dante, 
who had their minds fixed on the old ideal of a united Christen- 
dom. But, since the days of the old Roman Empire, Europe 
had never known a true union. "Latin Christendom," in its 
best period, had contained several layers of society, — nobles, 
burgesses, artisans, priests, peasants. These horizontal lines 
of cleavage between classes had been far more disastrous to 
union than the new cleavage into nations was to be. One class 
had been more foreign to another in the same land than France 
to England. ' French noble and German noble were always 
ready to make common cause against peasants or townsfolk of 
either country. The real mission of each of the neiv monarchies, 
whether the monarchs saw it yet or not, was to weld all the classes 
within its land into one people with a common patriotism. While 
this was being don'e, some old liberties Were lost. But, un- 
consciously, the monarchs were paving the way for a new 
freedom, a few centuries later, broader and safer than the world 
had ever known. 

We have noted the rise of new powerful monarchies in Eng- 
land, France, Spain, and Austria. Like governments had ap- 
peared in Hungary, Bohemia, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland. 
Two small lands, Switzerland and the Netherlands, were loosely 
connected with the Austrian Hapsburg monarchy. Two great 
lands had no part in the movement : until 1250, Germany and 
Italy had been the center of interest ; but their claim for uni- 
versal rule had left them broken in fragments. Not for cen- 
turies were they to reach a united government. Leadership, 



A NEW NATIONAL PATRIOTISM 



589 




Illusthation from a Fifteenth Century Manuscript, showing in 
the foreground Maximilian of Austria. Mary of Burgundy, and 
their son Philip. The original is in colors. 



590 



RISE OF MONARCHIC STATES 



therefqre, passed from them to France, Spain, and England, — 
the three countries in which the new movement was most 
advanced. 




Ca d'Oro, a Venetian palace built in the thirteenth century. Venetian 
architecture was based upon the old Romanesque, modified by the 
Saracenic from the south and the Gothic from the north. Cf . cuts on 
pp. 594, 595. 

In Italy, by 1450 the many petty divisions had been brought 
under one or another of "Five Great States," — the Kingdom of 
Sicily in the south, the Papal States in the center, and Milan, 
Florence, and Venice, in the north. This movement toward 



DANGER OF WORLD MONARCHY 591 

unity, however, had not gone far enough to make Italy safe. 
In 1494i as heir of the House of Anjou (p. 531), Charles VIII 
of France claimed the crown of Sicily. He crossed the Alps 
with a mighty army, and marched victoriously from end to end 
of the peninsula, regulating at will not only the southern king- 
dom but the northern states as well. But behind him gathered 
insulted Italian foes ; Ferdinand of Aragon advanced a claim 
to Sicily; and Venice joined the anti-French party. Charles 
secured his retreat into France by a desperate battle ; but 
Spain was left mistress of Sicily and Naples. 

Now swift steps brought the Hapshurg power within sight The danger 

of a world-monarchy. Ferdinand of Aragon had married one ^ world- 
•' ^ _ '^ monarch 

daughter to the young English prince soon to become Henry 

VIII, and another to Philip of Hapsburg, son of the Emperor 

Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy (p. 588). From this last 

marriage, in 1500, was born a child, Charles. 

Charles' father had been ruler of the rich provinces of the 
Netherlands; and Charles, while yet a boy, acquired those 
districts. In 1516 Charles also succeeded his grandfather, 
Ferdinand, as king of Sicily and Naples and as king of Spain, 
with the gold-producing realms in America that had just be- 
come Spain's. Three years later he succeeded his other grand- 
father, Maximilian, as the hereditary ruler of Austria, with its 
many dependent provinces. Then, still a boy of nineteen, 
Charles became a candidate for the title of .Emperor, which 
Maximilian's death had left vacant ; and his wealth (or that 
of his Flemish merchants) enabled him to win against his rivals, 
Francis of France and Henry VIII of England. 

Thus Charles I of Spain, at twenty, became also Charles V, 
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. This election gave him a 
claim of lordship over Germany and the rest of Italy. His 
hereditary possessions made it seem possible for a while that 
he might make his claim good — and so more than restore 
the empire of the first great Charles (Charlemagne). 

Compact France, at first, was his only obstacle (p. 575) ; 



592 T> ANGER OF WORLD MONARCHY AVERTED 

and no time was lost by Charles and the French Francis in 
joining battle. The battle of Pavia left Francis a captive, and 
France apparently at the Hapsburgs' feet. But just then (1520) 
Martin Luther, an obscure monk in Germany, burned a papal bull 
and started the Protestant Reformation, which split Germany 
and Europe at once into opposing camps and rendered forever 
vain the dream of restoring the old imperial unity of Christendom. 
When a world-union comes — perhaps soon, in our day — it 
will come as a federation of free peoples. 



Review Exercises 

1. Fact drills. 

(a) Dates. Add to previous lists the following: 1381, 1414, 
1453, 1492. (6) Fix other events in connection ivith the above. 
(c) Extend list of terms for brief explanation: "take the cross," Dukes 
of Athens, Teutonic Order, Janissaries, etc. 

2. Review questions presented by class. 

3. Map reviews and comparisons. 

4. General topics : (a) parliamentary assembUes of Europe, — 
Diets, Estates, Cortes, etc. ; (6) movements for rehgious reforms within 
the church ; (c) jnovements for religious reforms that threatenod, at 
least, to act outside the church. 









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"l^iiSaitS 







CHAPTER LVIII 

THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1520 

The Transition to Modern Times 

The Age of Feudalism (pp. 468 ff.) covered five hundred The periods 
years — from 800 to 1300. The first three centuries (800- ^^^JJ age 
1100) were a continuation of the "Dark Ages" of the barbarian 
invasions, after the brief interruption by Charlemagne. In 
those gloomy three hundred years we noted the grim feudal 
system at its height, the medieval church, serf labor, the destruc- (i) The 
tive strife between empire and papacy, and, at the close, the ^^ ^^^ 
Norman Conquest of England. 

The year 1100 was the threshold over which we passed from (2) The 
those centuries of gloom to two centuries of fruitful progress. 
That Age of the Crusades saw also the rise of towns, of uni- 
versities, of popular literatures, of Gothic architecture in 
cathedrals and town halls, of the growth of France out of 
feudal fragments into one kingdom, and of the rise of courts 
and of Parliament in England. 

The year 1300 is another milestone of progress, introducing The Age of 
two centuries of still more rapid advance. The period 1300- „it^„^^~ 
1520 we call the Age of the Re^iaissance, because those centuries 
are marked by a "rebirth" of a long-forgotten way of looking at 
life. That old way had expressed itself in the art and literature 
of the ancient Greeks. Accordingly, the men of the new age Relation to 
were passionately enthusiastic over all remains of the old ^-yj^^^l^ 
classical period. The fundamental characteristic of the Renais- 
sance, however, was not its devotion to the past, but its joyous 
self-trust in the present. The men of the Renaissance cared 
for the ancient culture because they found there what they 
themselves thought and felt. 

593 



594 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1520 



Between those classical times and the fourteenth century 
there had intervened centuries of very different life. Those 
" Middle Ages" had three marks on the intellectual side. (1) Ig- 
norance was the general rule ; and even the learned followed 
slavishly in the footsteps of some intellectual master. (2) Man 
as an individual counted for little. In all his activities he was 
part of some gild or order or corporation. (3) Interest in the 




The Ducal Palacio, Venice. 

future life was so intense that many good men neglected the 
present life. Beauty in nature was little regarded, or regarded 
as a temptation of the devil. 

The Renaissance changed all this. (1) For blind obedience 
to authority, it substituted the free inquiring way in which the 
ancients had looked at things. (2) Men developed new self- 
reliance and self-confidence, and a fresh and lively originality. 
And (3) they awoke to delight in flower and sky and mountain, 
in the beauty of the human body, in all the pleasures of the 
natural world. 



FIRST IN ITALY 



595 



This transformation — one of the two or three most wonderful The Ren- 
changes in all history — began first in Italy. It had done its ^g^g^^*^^ 
work in that land by 1550 ; while it hardly began in England Italy 
until 1500, and there it lasted through Shakspere's age, to 
about 1600. It showed itself, too, at different times in different 




St. Mark's, Venice. 



ways : first in art, then in a revival of learning, and finally in 
religious reform. 

Italy was the natural home for a revival in literature and art. 
Vergil had been read by a few Italian scholars all down the 
Middle Ages. The Italian language was nearer the Latin 
than any other European language was, and more manuscripts 
of the ancient Roman writers survived in Italy than elsewhere 
in Western Europe. Thus the Florentine Petrarch stands as 
the first great champion of the new age. His graceful sonnets 
are a famous part of Italian literature, but his chief influence pion 
upon the world lay in his work as a tireless critic of the medieval 



Petrarch 
(1304-1374) 
the cham- 



596 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1520 



system. He attacked vehemently the superstitions and the 
false science of the day, and he ridiculed the universities, with 
their blind reverence for "authority," as "nests of gloomy 
ignorance." He began an enthusiastic search for classical 
manuscripts and other remains, to recover what the ancients 
had possessed of art and knowledge. One of his disciples, 
Boccaccio, wrote the first dictionaries of classical geography and 
of Greek mythology, and brought back into Italy the study 
of Greek. 
" Human- This new enthusiasm for the classics became known as 

'^™ Hummiisvi (Latin, hunianitas, culture). Before 1450, the 

Humanists had recovered practically all the literary remains we 
now have of the Latin authors, and a large part of the sur- 
viving Greek manuscripts. Oftentimes neglected manuscripts 
were found decaying in moldy vaults. Many had been muti- 
lated, or had been erased in order that the parchment might 
receive some monastic legend. In some cases this later writing 
has since been carefully removed, and the original writing 
restored faintly, through chemical processes. Much had been 
wholly lost ; and if the humanistic revival had been a little longer 
delayed, a great deal that we now possess could never have 
been recovered. 
Revival of With all their zeal for Greek manuscripts, and Latin trans- 

Greek in lations of them, most of the early Humanists were ignorant of 

Italy: r^ ^ 

aided by the the Greek language ; but after the year 1400, the knowledge 
*f^^ °^ of that tongue grew rapidly. Greek scholars were invited to 

tinople the Italian cities and were given professorships in the univer- 

sities. The increasing, danger in the Greek Empire from the 
Turk (p. 583) made such invitations welcome, and the high 
prices paid by princely Italian collectors drew more and more 
of the literary treasures of Constantinople to the Italian cities. 
Many a fugitive scholar from the East found the possession of 
some precious manuscript the key to fortune and favor in Italy. ^ 
This movement received a sudden brief acceleration when Con- 



1 The value of such a manuscript furnishes an essential element in the plot 
of George Eliot's Romola. 



THE PAGAN SIDE 



597 



stantinople fell, in 1453. "Greece did not perish," said an 
Italian scholar; "it emigrated to Italy." 

At first. Humanism had been stoutly resisted by the univer- 
sities, but it finally captured them and established a "new 
education." The earlier "liberal education" had contained no 
Greek and had given little acquaintance with the Latin authors. 
The courses in "arts" were now broadened so as to furnish a 
true classical training. Medieval Latin was replaced by the 
refined style of Cicero, and Greek thought and knowledge and 
the grand and beautiful conceptions of Greek and Latin litera- 
ture were gradually absorbed into our modern thought — which 
they still color. 



Great 
painters 



With the rebirth of delight in beauty, painting and sculpture Painting 
were reborn into the world ; and painting, at least, reached a ^^ ^j^^ 
perfection never before known. Italian painting culminated Renaissance 
in the years from 1470 to 1550. To these eighty years belongs 
the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angela, Fra Angelico, 
Perugino, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, 
and Correggio. Each town had its able artists, but nearly all the 
greatest masters, like most of those just named, belonged to 
Florence or to Venice. Many of these men practiced more 
than one art. Thus, Michael Angelo was great as architect, 
engineer, and sculptor, as well as painter, and he was not with- 
out fame as a poet. 

A little later came the great periods of Dutch and Spanish 
painting. The new development in all these lands was made 
possible, of course, by new methods of preparing oil paints 
(invented by the Van Eycks in Holland), so that it became 
possible to paint upon canvas, instead of only on walls and 
ceilings. About the same time engraving of copper plates and 
"woodcuts" came into use. 



There was an evil, pagan side to the Italian Renaissance. The pagan 
The men of the new movement, having cast off old restraints Rgndssanc 
and beliefs, fell often into gross and shallow unbelief and into 



598 THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1520 - 

shameless self-indulgence. Delight in beauty sometimes sank 
into gross sensuality. Morals declined, and for a time Italian 
society sank lower than the old pagan world. The "Men 
of the Renaissance" were always polished and elegant and 
full of robust vitality ; but many of them went to their goal 
recklessly by any means, and some of them were perfidious 
monsters. 

This side of the Renaissance was typified by the Italian 
Condottieri, — roving captains of bands of soldiers of fortune. 
These chieftains sold their services to any city with a price to 
pay, — and then betrayed it, on occasion, or seized it for them- 
selves, if convenient. Such was the source of most of the 
Italian "tyrants" (p. 551) of the time. Many of them were 
generous patrons of art and learning ; but their marked 
characteristics were indomitable will, reckless scorn of danger, 
powerful minds, and absolute freedom from moral scruple — 
which led them to extremes of cruelty and treachery when- 
ever such measures seemed useful to them. Like traits show 
a few years later, in the Spanish conquerors of the New World, 
— Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa, and their fellows. The scores of 
English sea-kings of the next century — Raleigh, Drake, Haw- 
kins, Gilbert, Grenville (who fought "the fight of the one and 
the fifty-three" ^) — belong to the same order of men except 
that in them cruelty is refined into sternness, and perfidy is re- 
placed by lofty honor, through the greater moral earnestness 
of the Renaissance in the North. 

For the Renaissance was mainly artistic and literary in the 
south of Europe, and mainly scientific and religious in the 
north. In Italy, Petrarch and his followers had begun a careful 
study of old and corrupted documents to restore their original 
form. A little before 1500 this "New Learning" from Italy 
was welcomed in England by an eager group of young scholars ■ 
known as the "Oxford Reformers," who saw in the new "his- 
torical criticism" a means of correcting errors that had crept 
1 Read Tennyson's poem of that name, 



IN NORTH EUROPE 



599 



into religion. Most important among this group were Erasmus 
(a Hollander living in England) and Sir Thomas More. 

The influence of Erasmus extended throughout Europe ; and Erasmus 
his name was probably the most widely respected one in that 
age. In 1516 he published the New Testament in the original 
Greek, with a careful Latin translation. His Greek text was 
prepared more carefully, and undoubtedly was much nearer 
the original gospels, than 
any the Middle Ages had 
known, and it was accom- 
panied by critical notes. 
Now, for the first time, 
ordinary scholars could 
test satisfactorily^ the ac- 
curacy of the common 
Latin translation (the 
Vulgate) in use in the 
church. Afterward Eras- 
mus edited the writings of 
many of the early Chris- 
tian Fathers — to show 
the character of early 
Christianity. 

In another sort of woi ks 
— as in his famous Praise 
of Folly — with keen and 
graceful ridicule, Erasmus 

lashed the false learning and foolish methods of the monks and 
Schoolmen. He has been called " the Scholar of the Reforma- 
tion." His writings did furnish Luther (p. 604) with much 
material ready for use against the old religious system; but 
Erasmus was not himself a revolutionist. Instead, he worked, 
with beautiful charity and patience and largeness of view, for 
reform within the great mother church. 

Sir Thomas More was one of the noblest Englishmen of Sir Thomas 
any age. He was a distinguished scholar — his learning ^°*® 




Erasmus. — After a portrait by Holbein. 



600 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1520 



brightened by a gentle and pervading humor — and a man 
of great personal charm. It was at his house that Erasmus 
wrote his Praise of Folly. More's own influence was given to 
reform in society rather than in religion. In the year that 
Erasmus published his Greek Testament, More issued his 
Description of the Republic of Utopia ("Nowhere"). He por- 
trays, with burning sympathy, the miseries of the English 
peasantry, and points accusingly to the barbarous, social, and 
political conditions of his time by contrasting with them the 
conditions in "Nowhere" — where the people elect their gov- 
ernment (which accordingly is devoted solely to their wel- 
fare), possess good homes, work short hoursj enjoy absolute 
freedom of speech, high intellectual culture, and universal 
happiness, with all property in common. Utopia was the first 
of the many modern attempts to picture, in the guise of fiction, 
an ideal state of society. 

The new intellectual movement was marked by a number 
of new inventions or by the fost practical use of them. The 
telescope revealed other worlds in the heavens. The mariner's 
compass enabled Columbus to discover a New World on the 
old earth. Gu.ipowder (p. 567), which found its first serious 
use in the wars between Charles V and Francis I, gave the 
final blow to dying feudalism. And printing did more to 
create a new society than gunpowder could to destroy the old. 
Two of these new movements call for special notice. 

1. Early medieval manuscripts were all written on parch- 
ments. These were costly and hard to obtain in any desirable 
quantity. About 1300, to be sure, a cheaper paper was intro- 
duced by the Saracens ; but all books had still to be written 
by the pen. Soon after 1400, engravers began to make the re- 
production of books cheaper by engraving each page on a block 
of wood (as the Chinese seem to have done centuries earlier). 
This was still costly. But now, about 1450, John Gutenberg, 
at Mainz, found how to "cast" separate metal type in molds. 

This invention of movable type reduced the price of books 
at once to a twentieth their old cost. It came, too, at a happy 



PRINTING AND DISCOVERY 



601 



moment. It preserved the precious works recovered by the 
Humanists; and soon it was to spread broadcast the new 
thought of the Reformation. 

2. The ancients had played with the notion of saiUng around New 
the earth. Aristotle speaks of "persons" who held that it dLTcI^eril?' 
might be possible ; and Strabo, a Roman geographer, suggested 
that one or more continents might lie in the iVtlantic between 
Europe and Asia. But during the Middle x4ges men had come 
to believe that the known habitable earth was bounded on all 
sides by an uninhabitable 
and untraversable world, 
— on the north by snow 
and ice, on the south by 
a fiery zone, on the west 
by watery wastes stretch- 
ing down an inclined 
plane, up which men 
might not return, and on 
the east by a dim land of 
fog and fen, the abode of 
strange and terrible mon- 
sters. The Indian Ocean, 
too, was thought to be a 
lake, encompassed by the 
shores of Asia and Africa. 

These false views had 
been partly corrected by a better geographical knowledge of 
Asia, gained in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Louis 
IX of France sent Friar Rubruk as ambassador to the court of 
the Tartar Khan in central Asia; and the friar on his return 
reported that he had heard of a navigable ocean east of Cathay 
(China), with a marvelously wealthy island, Zipango (Japan). 

This rumor made a leap in men's thought. Friar Bacon in 
England (p. 559) at once raised the question whether this eastern 
ocean might not be the same as the one that washed Europe 
on the west and whether men might not reach Asia by sailing 




Illustration in a Thirteenth Century 
Manuscript ; showing a Monk teaching 
the Globe. 



602 



THE RENAISSANCE, 1300-1520 



west into the Atlantic. Indeed, Bacon wrote a book to support 
these conjectures, adding many opinions of the Ancients; and 
extensive extracts from this volume were copied into a later 
book, which was to become a favorite of Columbus. Such 
speculation implies that scholars understood the sphericity of 
the earth. Saracenic schools had preserved the old Greek 
knowledge in this matter, and some European thinkers had 
been familiar with it, even in the "Dark Ages." 

Moreover, the Mongol emperors (p. 681) opened China to 
western strangers to a degree altogether new for that land; 
and, while Mongol dominion lasted, many strangers and mer- 
chants visited the East. Among these were three Venetians, 
the Polos, who on their return sailed from Peking through the 
straits into the Indian Ocean and up the Persian Gulf. This 
proved true the rumor of Rubruk regarding an eastern ocean, and 
jjroved also that the Indian Ocean was not landlocked. From 
this time it was possible to think seriously of reaching India 
by sailing west. Soon afterward commercial conditions changed 
so as to impel men earnestly to try it. 

The Crusades, we have seen, had given a new impulse to trade 
with the Orient, but in the fifteenth centuiy, the progress of 
the Turks threatened the old trade routes. Constantinople, 
the emporium for the route by the Black Sea, fell into their 
hands, and each year their power crept farther south in Asia, 
endangering the remaining route by the Red Sea. Under these 
circumstances the question was forced home to Europe whether 
or not a new route could he found. The speculations of Bacon 
and the discoveries of the Polos pointed to an answer. 

The Portuguese, under Prince Henry the Navigator, had 
already been engaged in building up a Portuguese empire in 
Africa and in the islands of the Atlantic (Azores, Canary, and 
Verde ^) ; and about l/P'V they began to attempt to reach India 
by sailing around Africa. In 1486 a Portuguese captain, Bar- 
tholomew Diaz, while engaged in this attempt, was carried far 

1 The name " Cape Verde" indicates the surprise of the discoverers (1450) 
^t verdure so far south. 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 603 

to the south in a storm, and on his return to the coast he found 
it on his left hand as he moved toward the north. He followed 
it several hundred miles, well into the Indian Ocean. Then his 
sailors compelled him to turn back to Portugal. India was 
not actually reached until the expedition of Vasco da Gama in 
1498, after more memorable voyages in another direction. 




and 
America 



Columbus at the Council Table of Ferdinand and Isabella. — From 
the painting by Brozik in the Metropohtan Museum, New Ycrk. 

One of the sailors with Diaz in 1486, when in this way he Columbus 
rounded the Cape of "Good Hope," was a Bartholomew 
Columbus, whose brother Christopher also had sailed on several 
Portuguese voyages. Now, however, for some years, Christo- 
pher Columbus had devoted himself to the more daring theory 
that India could be reached by sailing west into the open 
Atlantic. Portugal, well content with her monopoly of African 
exploration, refused to assist him to try his plan. Henry VII 
of England also declined to furnish him ships. But finally, the 
high-minded Isabella of Castile, while the siege of Granada 
was in progress, fitted out his small fleet, and in 1492 Colum- 
bus revealed to Europe the continent of America. 



PART IX 

THE AGE OF THE PEOTESTANT EEFOEMATION, 1520-1648 

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 

And God fulfills himself in many ways 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

— Tennyson. 



CHAPTER LIX 



THE REFORMATION UPON THE CONTINENT 



LUTHERANISM 

All the later references to the church have involved some men- 
tion of abuses growing up within it. Good Christians lamented 
those abuses. A few broad-minded, genial men, like Erasmus, 
strove earnestly to reform them. Less patient, more impetuous 
men broke away in a revolt which divided Western Christendom 
into hostile camps for centuries and which is called the Protestant 
"Reformation." 

The revolt began in Germany. That land had a special griev- 
ance. It was a poor country; but, since it lacked a strong 
government to protect it, its little, hard-won wealth was drained 
away to richer Italy by extortionate papal taxes of many sorts. 
A like abuse existed in other countries, but nowhere else in so 
serious a degree. From peasant to prince, the German people 
had long grumbled as they paid ; and they needed only a leader 
to rise against papal control. 

Martin Luther (1483-1546), son of a Thuringian peasant- 
miner, became that needed leader. Luther was a born fighter, — 
a straightforward, forceful man, with a blunt homely way that 
sometimes degenerated into coarseness. Erasmus addressed 

604 



MARTIN LUTHER 



605 



polite society : Luther spoke to the people. His father had 
meant him to be a lawyer, and, with great difficulty, had man- 
aged to send him to a university ; but, seized by terror of hell 
and fear for his soul, the young Martin suddenly joined the 
Augustinian friars — an order somewhat like the Franciscans. 
His scholarship and his effective preaching soon attracted atten- 
tion, and Duke Frederick the Wise of Saxony made him a pro- 
fessor of theology in the new University of Wittenberg. There, 
at thirty-four, he entered upon his struggle with Rome. 




St. Peter's, Rome. 



Luther's revolt began in his opposition to the sale of indul- Luther and 
gences. To get money to rebuild St. Peter's Cathedral at [ndul^lnces 
Rome, a German archbishop had licensed John Tetzel, a Do- 
minican, to sell indulgences. The practice was an old one, 
arising easily out of the doctrine of " penance." The authorized 
teaching of the church was, that, in reward for some pious act 
— or for the gift of money for a pious purpose — a sinner tvho 
had truly repented and who had, so far as possible, atoned for 
his sins, might have the punishment due in purgatory remitted 



606 



THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



by the church. "Letters of indulgence" from the pope, — the 
immediate representative of St. Peter, — were especially valued, 
and it had become customary to sell them in great quantities as 
one source of the papal revenues. The ignorant masses, unable 
to read the Latin documents, often thought that an "indul- 
gence " was an unconditional pardon, — contrary to the doc- 
trine of the church, — or even that it was a license to sin in 
future; and some professional "pardoners," who peddled such 
"letters," encouraged these gross errors. Tetzel was a special 
offender in this way. A rude German rhyme, ascribed to him, 
runs, " The money rattles in the box ; the soul from purgatory 
flies." More than a hundred years before, the bright-souled 
Chaucer had given the only bitter lines in his Canterbury Tales 
to the Pardoner with his wallet " bret-full of pardons, come from 
Rome all hot." Since then, the evil had grown hugely. The 
gentle Erasmus WTote scathing words against it. Luther had 
criticized it on more than one occasion. Now a visit of Tetzel 
to Wittenberg, with a batch of these papal letters, aroused him 
to more vehement protest. 

On a Sunday in October, 1517, Luther nailed to the door of 
the Wittenberg church ninetj^-five "theses" (statements) upon 
which he challenged all comers to debate. That door was the 
usual university bulletin board where it was customary for one 
scholar to challenge others to debate. But Luther's act had 
consequences far beyond the university. The theses were in 
Latin, the regular university language. They accepted the 
church doctrine about indulgences, but criticized savagely 
the abuses connected with the practice of selling them. Is there 
not danger, they hinted, that poor men may wonder why, if 
the pope releases souls from purgatory for money, he does not 
do so for charity's sake? It was these criticisms that drew 
popular attention. The printing press scattered copies of the 
theses broadcast in German, and in a few days they were be- 
ing discussed hotly over all Germany. 

At first Luther seems to have had no thought of denying 
the authority of the pope. Indeed, he asserted that the pope 



IN GERMANY 607 

would be the first to condemn Tetzel's practices. And he was 
honestly amazed, too, at the public attention his theses received. 
He dedicated a pamphlet in defense of them to Pope Leo (X), 
and in his letter to the pope he says : " Save or slay, call or 
recall, approve or disapprove, as it shall best please you, / 
shall acknowledge your voice as the voice of Christ." 

The matter of indulgences soon dropped out of sight. The 
papal legate in Germany reprimanded Tetzel sternly for his 
gross mispractice ; and now that the church had its attention 
called forcefully to the abuses, they were soon corrected. But, 
meanwhile, in the heat of argument, Luther passed quickly to 
a more radical position. He startled all parties by expressing 
approval of the heretic Hussites ; and in 1519 he denied the 
authority of the pope and of church councils, appealing instead to 
the Bible as the sole rule of conduct and belief. 

Luther tried to substitute one authority for another. 
He had no intention of advancing freedom of thought. 
But the Bible is capable of many interpretations. His 
appeal to the Bible as the sole authority meant Luther's 
understanding of the Bible. In the mouth of another man, 
however, the same appeal meant that other's understand- 
ing of the book. So, unintentionally, the Protestant revolt 
came to stand for the right of individual judgment. 

The gentle Pope Leo tried to bring the rebel back into the Luther 
church by persuasion and argument, but when this failed, he j ^^^ 

issued a bull of excommunication. The document condemned 
a number of the new teachings, ordered Luther to burn his books, 
and threatened him and his followers with punishment as here- 
tics unless they recanted within two months. Instead of burn- 
ing his own books, Luther burned the papal bull in a bonfire of 
other writings of the church, before the town gate m December, 
1620, while a crowd of students and townsfolk brought fuel. 
The German friar had declared war upon the church. 

The pope appealed to the young emperor, Charles V (p. 591), Luther 
to punish the heretic. Germany was in uproar. A papal ^* °^^^ 



608 



THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



\ legate wrote, "Nine tenths of Germany shouts for Luther." 

The Emperor, coming to Germany for the first time, called an 
imperial Diet ^ at Worms (1521) and summoned Luther to be 
present, pledging safe conduct. Friends tried to dissuade 
Luther from going, pointing to the fate of Hus a century before ; 
but said he, "I would go on if there were as many devils in 
Worms as there are tiles on the housetops." At Worms he was 
confronted with scornful contempt by the great dignitaries of 
the church and of the empire ; but to the haughty command 
that he recant he answered firmly, — " Unless I am proven 
wrong by Scripture or plain reason . . . my conscience is 
caught in the word of God. . . . Here I stand. As God is 
my help, I can no otherwise." 
A German Charles kept his pledge, and Luther departed in safety. A 

^ ® month later the Diet pronounced against him the "ban of the 

empire," ordering that he be put to death, and his writings 
burned. But the friendly Frederick of Saxony had had him 
seized, on his way homeward, and carried into hiding in the 
castle of Wartburg. Most of his followers mourned him as 
dead; but in this refuge Luther translated the New Testa- 
ment into strong and simple German. While he was still 
in hiding, his teachings were accepted by whole communi- 
ties. Priests married ; nuns and monks left their convents ; 
powerful princes joined the new communion, sometimes from 
honest conviction, sometimes as an excuse for seizing church 
lands. 
Lutheran- In 1522, Luther left his safe retreat to guide the movement 

ism wins the again in person and to restrain it from going to extremes that 
German he disliked. Changes in religion, he urged, should be made 
princes Q^\y jjy f}^, cjovemments , not by the people. He preserved all 

that he could of the old church services and organization, estab- 
lishing them on essentially the basis on which they still stand 

1 The German Diet in early times contained only nobles. In the four- 
teenth century, representatives of the "free cities" were admitted. Then 
the Diet sat usually in three Houses, Electors (the seven great princes), 
Princes (of second rank), and City Representatives. It never gained anv 
real place in the government of the Empire. 



IN GERMANY 609 

in the Lutheran church. By 1530 that church had won North 
Germany. 

Charles V, the young emperor, was a zealous churchman, Foreign 
and if his hands had been free, he would have enforced the ban ^^'^^,^^®,? 

Charles V 
of the empire promptly and crushed Lutheranism at its birth, from acting 

But even while the Diet of Worms was condemning Luther, the 

Spanish towns were rising in revolt and Francis I of France was 

seizing Italian territory (p. 591). These events called Charles 

hastily from Germany. He put down the rebellion promptly 

and crushed the ancient liberties of the Spanish towns ; but the 

wars against France, and against the Turk, with only brief 

truces, filled the next twenty-three years (1321-1544). 

The first pause in the French wars came in 1529. Charles The " Prot- 
at once summoned a German Diet, which reaffirmed the decree ^^d tug 
of Worms. x\gainst this decision, however, the Lutheran Augsburg 
princes presented a protest. This act gave the name Protestant '^ ession 
to their party. The following year, in a Diet at Augsburg, 
the Lutherans put forward a written statement of their beliefs, 
"the Augsburg Confession," which is still the platform of the 
Lutheran church. Charles prepared to enforce by arms the 
decree of Worms ; but an open clash was once more postponed, 
because Soh^man the Magnificent, the Turkish Sultan, invaded 
Germany. 

Before Charles was again' at liberty to give his attention to his 
Protestant subjects, Lutheranism had become the religion not 
only of most of Germany but also of all Scandinavia, while the 
EngHsh church had cut itself off from Rome as an independent 
Episcopal church (p. 617), and a new Presbyterian heresy had 
begun to spread rapidl}'- in France. Try as he might, Charles Peace of 
did not find himself free to strike in Germany until 1546, the Augsburg 
year of Luther's death. Then two brief struggles settled the 
contest for the time. In the first, Charles seemed completely 
victorious ; but almost at once the defeated princes rallied 
again, drove Charles in hurried flight from their domains, and 
forced him to accept the Peace of Augsburg (1555). 

According to this treaty, each ruling prince of the Empire 



610 



THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



was free to choose between Lutheranism and Catholicism for 
himself and for all his subjects; but if an ecclesiastical ruler 
became a Protestant, he was to surrender his lands to the 
church, from whom they came. This peace secured toleration for 
princes only, not for their subjects. The people were expected 
to follow the religion of the ruler. 

Th3 Protestants in their last rising had sought aid from 
Henry II, the new French king ; and France for her reward 
had seized some German districts, including the city of Metz. 
Chagrined at the loss, and disheartened by the split within the 
Empire, Charles abdicated his many crowns in 1556. His 
brother Ferdinand became ruler of Austria, and soon after 
was chosen Emperor, while by marriage he added Hungary to 
the Hapsburg hereditary dominions. Charles' son, Philip II, 
received the Netherlands, Spain, Naples, and Spanish America. 
There were now two Hapsburg Houses, one in Spain, one in 
Austria. France feared that she might he crushed between them, 
and became more eager to take advantage of any chance to 
weaken them. 



CALVINISM — IN SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE 

While Lutheranism was winning North Germany and Scan- 
dinavia, another form of Protestantism, Calvinism, was growing 
up in Switzerland and, for a time, in France and even in the 
west of Germany. 

This movement was started in 1519 (the year before Luther 
burned the papal bull), by Zwingli, a priest at Zurich in German 
Switzerland. Zwingli, like Luther, was of peasant birth, but 
he too had enjoyed a good education. He was far more radical 
than Luther, refusing to keep anything of the old religion that 
he did not think absolutely commanded by the Bible. He also 
organized a strict system of church discipline which severely 
punished gaming, swearing, drunkenness, and some innocent 
sports. 

Zwingli's teachings were accepted rapidly by the rich "city 



IN SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE 



611 



cantons" of Switzerland, both German and French, like Zurich 
and Berne. But the peasant "forest cantons," the core of the 
original confederation (p. 584), remained Catholic. In a battle 
between the two parties, in 1531, Zwingli was killed; but his 
work was soon taken up — and carried further — by the man 
whose name has come to stand for the whole movement. 

John Calvin was a young French scholar of sternly logical Calvin 
mind. He is the father of Puritan theology and of the Presby- ^* ^®°' 
terian church, with its 
system of synods and pres- 
byteries. This church gov- 
ernment and doctrine he 
built up at Geneva. 

Geneva was a French 
town in the Swiss Alps. 
It was not yet -a member 
of the Swiss confederation, 
but it had recently become 
a free city-republic by re- 
bellion against its overlord . 
That overlord had been a 
Catholic ecclesiastic ; and 
so Geneva was now ready 
to accept Protestant teach- 
ings. In 1536, Calvin, a 
fugitive from France be- 
cause of his heresy, found 
refuge there and soon be- 
came an absolute dictator over both the church and the civil 
government. Geneva became a Puritan "theocracy," "with 
Calvin for its pope." 

Calvin took the law of Moses rather than the spirit of Christ 
for the basis of his legislation. Blasphemy he counted a capi- 
tal crime, and he once had a child beheaded because it had 
struck its father. The government repressed harshly amuse- 
ments like dancing, and it tyrannized over men's private life. 




A Village Maypole of the sixteenth 
century, such as Calvin condemned. 
Compare the earUer merry-making 
pictured on page 488. 



612 



THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



punishing sternly for absence from church and for luxury in 
dress. But it made turbulent and unruly Geneva into a sober, 
industrious commonwealth, and it furnished many hints for the 
Puritan colony of Massachusetts a century later. 

One terrible case of persecution, in particular, stains Calvin's 
fame. Servetus was a learned Spanish physician, with intense 
religious convictions somewhat like those of modern Unitarians. 
He had had some literary controversies with Calvin ; but, to 
escape from Catholic persecution as a heretic at home, he fled 
to Geneva. Calvin's government there seized him, tried him 
in its own way for heresy, and burned him at the stake. 

Incidentally, this crime lyut bach medical progress for at least 
fifty yc'^i'1's. The foundation of true medical science lies in a 
knowledge of the circulation of the blood, as taught in any ele- 
mentary physiology to-day. But in the time of Servetus, it 
had been believed for centuries that the bright blood of the 
arteries and the dark blood of the veins were two distinct sys- 
tems, one from the heart, the other from the liver. Servetus 
first discovered that the two were one system. He found out 
how the dark blood is purified in the lungs, and understood 
fully the work of the heart. He had just published his medical 
discovery in the same book that contained his theological opin- 
ions. His persecutors sought out and burned this volume so 
zealously that only two copies survived, and these were long 
overlooked. The great discovery in physiology — which would 
have shown how to save hundreds of thousands of lives — was 
lost for half a century, until made again, independently, in 
, England in the age of Elizabeth (p. 626) by William Harvey. 

Catholic Spain early erected a statue in honor of Servetus ; 
and, in 1903, Calvinists all over the world subscribed a fund 
for the erection of the noble "expiatory statue," which now 
marks the spot where he suffered martyrdom. 

Calvinism 

in Scotland, Calvin's writings influenced profoundly his own and future 

^jjjj ' times. Ardent reformers from all Europe flocked to Geneva 

America to imbibe his teachings, and then returned to spread Calvinism 



AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 613 

in their own lands. From Geneva came the seeds of Scotch 
Preshyterianism, of the great Puritan movement within the English 
church (soon to be treated), of the leading Protestant movement 
among the Butch, and of the Huguenot church in France. John 
Winthrop, the founder of Massachusetts, took his ideas both 
in religion and in poHtics from Calvin. It is from the French 
Calvin, not the German Luther, that modern liberal Protestant- 
ism has sprung. 

hi its original form, the Calvinistic doctrine seems to nearly 
all men of the present time too somber and merciless. It was, 
however, sternly logical. It made strong men, and it appealed 
to strong spirits. Calvin did not believe in democracy, and 
he taught that for "subjects" to resist even a wicked ruler 
was "to resist God"; but, in spite of this teaching, in the 
course of historical movements, Calvinism became the ally of 
political freedom in Holland, England, and America. 

CATHOLICISM KEEPS THE SOUTH OF EUROPE 

For a time. Protestantism promised to win also the south The 
of Europe ; but Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Bohemia, and ' ^ou^ter- 
South Germany were finally saved to Catholicism. This was tion " 
mainly because the church quickly purged itself of old abuses, 
and woke to new moral energy. Especially did the great 
Council of Trent (1545-1563) prune away evil practices of long 
standing. 

The new enthusiasm within the Catholic world gave birth, 
also, to several new religious orders. The most important of 
these was the "Order of Jesus," founded in 1534 by Ignatius 
Loyola, a gallant and religious Spanish gentleman. The Jesuits 
stood to the friars somewhat as the friars stood to the older 
monks (p. 553). Holding fast like the friars to an intensely 
religious private life, they represented a further advance into the 
toorld of public affairs. Their members mingled with men in all 
capacities. Especially did they distinguish themselves as 
statesmen and as teachers. Their schools were the best in 
Europe, and many a Protestant youth was won back by them 



614 



THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



to Catholicism. In like manner, as individual counselors, they 
converted many a Protestant prince — especially in Germany, 
where the religion of the prince determined that of his people ; 
and their many devoted missionaries among the heathen in the 
New Worlds won vast regions to Christianity and Catholicism. 

Unhappily less praiseworthy forces played a part in the victory 
of Catholicism, — religious wars (p. 627 ff .) and the Inquisition. 

The Inquisition dated hack to the twelfth century, some three 
hundred years earlier. At that time the church had suffered 
one of its periods of decline ; and discontent with its corruption 
had given rise to several small heresies. The most important 
of these twelfth century heretical sects were the Alhigenscs in 
southeastern France. They rejected some doctrines of the 
church, and they rebelled especially against Its government 
by pope and priesthood — so that an old by-word, " I had rather 
be a Jew," became, for them, "I had rather be a priest" ! 

The church made many vain attempts to reclaim these 
heretics by gentle persuasion, and finally, the great reforming 
pope. Innocent III, proclaimed a "holy war" against them, 
declaring them "more wicked than Saracens." The feudal 
nobles of northern France rallied gladly to this. war. Aside 
from religious motives, they hated the democracy which was 
beginning to appear in the rising towns of the south, and they 
hungered greedily for the rich plunder of that more civilized 
region. A twenty years' struggle, marked by ferocious massa- 
cres, crushed the heretics, along with the prosperity — for a 
century — of what had been the richest province of France. '^ 

When open resistance ceased in desolated Languedoc, the pope 
set up a special court to exterminate any secret heretics remaining 
there. Soon afterward, this court, enlarged and reorganized, 
became a regular part of the government of the church for sup- 
pressing heresy. In this final form it is commonly known as 
the Spanish Inquisition. It held sway also in Portugal and 
Italy, as well as in the wide-lying possessions of Spain ; but 

1 It was this struggle that gave Philip II his chance to seize this district 
of Provence (p. 523). 



THE SPANISH INQUISITION 615 

England and the Scandinavian lands never admitted it, and 
France only in very slight degree. 

In the south of Europe, now, the Inquisition became one The Spanish 
means of stifling the new Protestant heresies. Its methods "^"p^ '°^ 
were atrocious. Children were encouraged to betray their estantism 
parents, and parents their children. Often upon secret accusa- 
tion by spies, a victim disappeared, without warning, to under- 
ground dungeons. The trial that followed was usually a farce. 
The court seldom confronted the accused with his accuser, or 
allowed him witnesses of his choosing; and it extorted confes- 
sion by cruel tortures, carried to a point where human courage 
could not endure. Acquittals were rare. The property of 
the convicted went to enrich the church, and the heretic him- 
self was handed over to the government for death by fire. Per- 
sccution of unbelievers was characteristic of the age. It disgraced 
every sect, Protestant as well as Catholic. But no Protestant 
land possessed a device so fiendishly calculated to accomplish 
its purpose as the Inquisition. 



CHAPTER LX 

ENGLAND AND THE PROTESTANT MOVEMENT 

171 England, separation from Rome was at first the act of the 
monarchs, and the motives were personal and political. Henry 
Vni (the second Tudor ^) had shown himself zealous against 
Luther, and had even written a book to controvert Luther's 
teaching. In return, the pope conferred upon him the title, 
"Defender of the Faith." A little later, however, Henry 
desired a divorce from his wife, the unfortunate Catherine of 
Aragon, aunt of Charles V (p. 591), with whom he had lived 
for nineteen years. Catherine's only child was a girl (Mary), 
and Henry was anxious for a son, in order to secure a peaceful 
succession at his death. More to the point, he wished sinfully 
to marry Anne Boleyn, a lady of the court. After long 
negotiation, the pope refused to grant the divorce. Thereupon 
Henry put himself in the place of the pope so far as his island 
was concerned, and secured the divorce from his own courts. 

1 Cf. p. 575. The following table of Tudor rulers shows also the claim of 
the first ruler of the next royal family (p. 645). 

(1) Henry VII (1485-1509) 



Margaret 
(m. James IV of Scotland) 

I 
James V of Scotland 

I 
Mary Queen of Scots 

I 
(6) James I 
(1603-1625) 



(2) Henry VIII (1509-1547) 



(4) Mary 
(1553-1558) 
(daughter of 
Catherine 
of Aragon) 



the first Stuart king 



Mary 
(grandmother of 
Lady Jane Grey,) 



(5) Elizabeth 
(1558-1603) 
(daughter of 
Anne Boleyn) 



(3) Edward VI 

(1547-1553)- 

(son of 

Jane Seymour) 



616 



THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



617 



The secession of the English church was accomplished in A Church 
the years 1532-1534 by two simple but far-reaching measures ° "^ ^^ 
of Henry's servile Parliament. (1) The clergy and people were 
forbidden to make any further payments to "the Bishop of 
Rome" ; and (2) the "x^ct of Supremacy" declared Henry the 
" only supreme head on earth of the Church of England." When 
Parliament passed these laws, Luther's movement was some 
twelve years old, and the Augsburg Confession had just been 
put into form. Zwingli had just been slain in Switzerland, and 
Calvin was about to take up his work. 

So far, in England, there had been no attack on the religious 
doctrines of the old church ; and Henry wished none. But his 
chief advisers, especially Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
who had pronounced his divorce, had strong Protestant lean- 
ings ; and so some additional measures were secured. The 
doctrine of purgatory was declared false; and the Bible, in 
English, was introduced into the church service, in place 
of the old Latin liturgy. The use of the English Bible was 
even permitted to private persons, except "husbandmen, 
artificers, journeymen, and women below the rank of gentle- 
woman." 

Most of England accepted these changes calmly, and even The " Pil- 
the clergy made no serious resistance, as a class, to the over- 
throw of the pope's power. But the monasteries were centers 
of criticism, and the north of England, more conservative than 
the south, was restless. Finally Henry hung ten friars, who 
had spoken blunt words about his second marriage, and began 
to seize monastery property. Then the northern counties rose, 
to march upon London. 

Henry's generals broke up this "Pilgrimage of Grace" and Henry's 
seventy-four leaders of the rising were executed, — among them, ^° '"^riel 
all the abbots in the north of England. Then Henry determined fulness " 
to root out resistance, and to enrich himself, by the utter ruin 
of the monasteries. A commission, which had hastily pretended 
to investigate them, declared them grossly corrupt. The 
report was grossly unfair, but it had been determined upon in 



grimage 
of Grace 



618 



THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



advance; and, at the king's wish, Parliament dissolved the 
seven hundred such institutions in England. 

A little of the wealth of the monasteries was set aside to found 
schools and hospitals (in place of the work in such lines formerly 
done by the monasteries themselves), but Henry seized most 
of the monastic lands for the crown. Then he parceled out 
parts of them, shrewdly, to new nobles and the gentry. Thou- 
sands of influential families were enriched by such gifts, and 




Ruins of Tintern Abbey. 



became centers of hostility to any reconciliation with Rome 
that would ruin their private fortunes. 

This dissolution of the monasteries was a deed of terrible 
cruelty. Eight thousand monks and nuns were driven, penni- 
less, from their homes, and some eighty thousand other people 
lost their means of livelihood. But Henry had destroyed 
hostility to his "reform," and had planted it deep in the in- 
terests of the country gentry and nobles. It is true, too, that, 
when things finally adjusted themselves to the revolution, 
the prosperity of England was increased by having the former 
property of the monasteries in lay hands. 



IN ENGLAND 



619 



These changes were as far as Henry would go. He had per- Henry 
mitted Httle change in doctrine ; and, to the close of his long p"^^^ 
reign, he beheaded "traitors" who recognized papal headship, and hangs 
and burned "heretics" who denied papal doctrines. In one ^^*'^°^^*^^ 
day, in 1540, three "heretics" and three "traitors" suffered 
death. One Protestant martyr was Anne Askewe, a gentle- 
woman of good family, who was burned for insisting, "The 
bread of the communion cannot be God." The most famous 
among the many noted 
Catholic martyrs was Sir 
Thomas More, the greatest 
Englishman of the day 
(p. 599). More had been 
Henry's chief minister, for 
a time. He was willing to 
allow the king's power 
over the church, so far as 
all temporal matters were 
concerned ; but he could 
not take an oath denying 
the pope's authority in 
spiritual matters. He was 
beheaded, and his head 
was impaled to wither on 
London Bridge. 

Every effort had been 
made to induce More to yield, and he had been plied with 
argument by subtle logicians. He was a broad-minded man 
and a statesman, — not disposed to die for a quibble. But 
conscience, not verbal quibble, was at stake. And when he 
had taken his stand, and the boat was bearing him down 
the Thames to prison, he was heard to exclaim, — "I thank 
the Lord, the field is won!" He had indeed won a supreme 
victory, not only for his own soul, but for the spiritual freedom 
of all the world. 

Henry was succeeded by his son Edward VI (1547-1553). 




Sir Thomas More. — After a copy by 
Rubens of Holbein's portrait. 



620 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 



The new king was a boy of nine, and during his short reign the 
government was held by a rapacious chque of Protestant lords. 
Partly to secure fresh plunder from the ruin of the church, 
this government tried to carry England into the full current 
of the Protestant movement. Priests were allowed to marry. 
The use of the old litany, and of incense, holy water, and the 
surplice, was forbidden. Commissioners to carry out these 
commands throughout England sometimes broke the stained- 
glass windows of sacred buildings and tore from the pedestals 
the carved forms of saints. Rebellion broke out, this time in 
southwestern England, but was put down cruelly. Several 
Catholics were burned as heretics and conspirators, — among 
them Father Forest, who was roasted barbarously in a swinging 
iron cradle over a slow fire. 

During this period, the Enqlish Prayer Book was put into 
its present form, under the direction of Cranmer (p. 617) ; and 
articles of faith, which inclined toward Calvinistic doctrine, 
were adopted. 

Henry had had Parliament fix the order in which his chil- 
dren should be entitled to succeed him ; and so when Edward 
died at fifteen, the throne passed to his elder half-sister, Mary, 
a daughter of Catherine of Aragon. Mary was an earnest 
Catholic, and naturally she felt an intense personal repugnance 
for the Protestant movement which had begun in England by 
the disgrace of her mother. The nation, too, was still over- 
whelmingly Catholic. The Protestants were organized and 
influential, but few in numbers ; and Mary had no difficulty in 
doing away with the Protestant innovations of her brother's 
time. But Mary wanted more than this. She wished to undo 
her father's work, and to restore England to its allegiance to the 
pope. Parliament readily voted the repeal of all anti-Catholic 
laws, but it refused stubbornly to restore the church lands. Finally 
the pope wisely waived this point. Then the nation was 
solemnly absolved, and received back into the Roman church. 

But Mary destroyed her work: (1) by marrying Philip of 
Spain, son of the Emperor Charles V, and (2) by a bloody perse- ■ 



AND QUEEN MARY 621 

cution of Protestants. All English patriots dreaded, with much Mary's 
reason, lest little England be made a mere province of the P^'^secutions 
world-wide Spanish rule ; and even zealous Catholics shuddered 
at the thought of the Spanish Inquisition, which their imagina- 
tion pictured looming up behind the Queen's hated Spanish 
bridegroom. 

This dread made the people particularly sensitive to Mary's 
religious persecution. That persecution in itself was quite 
enough to rouse popular fear and hatred. In a few months, 
more than two hundred and seventy martyrs were burned, — 
nearly half the entire number that suffered death for conscience' 
sake in all English history. Catholics had died for their faith 
under both Henry and Edward; but there had been no such 
'piling up of executions ; and, moreover, most of those Catholic 
victims had been put to death, nominally, not for religious 
opinions, but as detested traitors ; and the executions (with 
a very few exceptions) had taken place not by fire but by the 
more familiar headsman's ax. England had taken calmly 
the persecutions by these preceding sovereigns, but it was now 
deeply stirred. 

Other causes, too, made Mary unpopular. To please her Mary's 
husband (Philip) she led England into a silly war with France, i^^°y^' 
and then managed it blunderingly, even losing Calais, England's 
last foothold upon the continent. England had never seemed 
more contemptible to other nations or in greater perils. Ap- 
parently, it was doomed to become the prey of Spain or France. 
Mary had come to the throne amid a burst of popular enthu- 
siasm. She was a pure-minded but narrow woman, seeking 
to do her duty; but, after a reign of five years, she died more 
universally detested than any other EngKsh sovereign had ever 
been except the tyrant John. As Henry's Parliament had 
arranged, she was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, then 
twenty-five years old. 

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VHI and Anne Queen 
Boleyn. From her father, she had a strong body, power- j^g^g-igoa 
ful intellect, an imperious will, and dauntless courage; and 



622 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 



from her mother, vanity and love of display. From both 
parents she took a sort of bold beauty and a certain strain of 
coarseness. She had grown up in Henry's court among the 
men of the New Learning (p. 598), and was probably the best 
educated woman of her century, speaking several languages 
and reading both Latin and Greek. She has been called "a 
true child of the Renaissance," too, in her freedom from moral 




Kenilworth Castle. — From a fresco painting of 1620. The Earl of 
Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth here in a splendid pageant de- 
scribed in Scott's Kenilworth. The walls enclosed seven acres. 



scruple (p. 598). To Elizabeth, says a great historian, "a lie 
was simply an intellectual means of avoiding a difficulty." 

She was often vacillating in policy ; but she was a keen judge 
of men, and had the good sense to keep about her a group of 
wise and patriotic counselors. Now and then, in fits of passion, 
she stormed at these men like a common virago, but she never 
let them go ; and her shrewd common-sense made her the real 
ruler even among such statesmen. Above all, she had a deep 
love for her country. After more than forty years of rule, she 



QUEEN ELIZABETH 



623 



said proudly, and, on the whole, truly, — "I do call God to 
witness, never thought was cherished in my heart that tended 
not to my subjects' good." 

And England repaid her love with a passionate and romantic 
devotion to its "Virgin Queen." Except for her counselors, 
men knew little of Ehzabeth's deceit and weaknesses. They 
saw only that her long reign had piloted England safely 
through a maze of foreign perils, and had built up its power 
and dignity abroad and its unity and prosperity at home, 
while her court was made glorious by splendid bands of states- 













■ 1 5 








Mi 


te "-Sk 




■■'/ 


1 


i 


f 




1 


fl Sfl 


JPIapirii-'" ' ■- ^^;^'^^BH 





Kenilworth Castle To-day. From a photograph. 



men, warriors, scholars, and poets. Amid the petty squabbles 
of succeeding reigns, England looked back with longing to " The 
spacious days of great Elizabeth." 

When Elizabeth came to the throne, at least two thirds of England The " Eliza- 
was still Catholic in doctrine. Elizabeth herself had no liking settlement" 
for Protestantism, while she did like the pomp and ceremonial 
of the old church. She wanted neither the system of her sister 
nor that of her brother, but would have preferred to go back 
to that of her father. But the extreme Catholic party did not 



624 



THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND 



recognize her mother's marriag(? as valid, and so denied Eliza- 
beth's claim to the throne. This forced her to throw herself 
into the hands of the Protestants. She gave all chief offices 
in church and state to that active, intelligent, well-organized 
minority; and the "Elizabethan Settlement" established the 
English Episcopal church much as it still stands. At about 
the same time, John Knox brought Calvinism from Geneva to 
Scotland, and organized the Scotch Presbyterian church. 

But after Catholic plots against her throne began, Elizabeth 
adopted stronger measures. Many leading Catholics were 
fined and imprisoned for refusing to attend the English church. 
And, under a new law, Catholic priests, and others who made 
converts from Protestantism to Catholicism, were declared 
guilty of treason. Many martyrs suffered torture on the rack 
and death on the scaffold — nearly as many as had died in the 
persecution of " Bloody Mary " ; but Elizabeth, like her brother, 
succeeded in making such executions appear punishment of 
traitors for political plots, instead of religious persecution. 



England was constantly threatened by the two great powers 
of Europe, Catholic France and Spain. Neither, however, was 
willing to see the other gain England ; and by skillfully playing 
off one against the other, Elizabeth kept peace for many years 
and gained time for England to become strong. Gradually it 
grew more and more clear that the real foe was Spain. Then 
Elizabeth secretly gave aid to the Dutch, who were in rebellion 
against Philip II of Spain (p. 628), and, for years, English 
adventurers like Francis Drake sailed away on their own ac- 
count, half pirate fashion, to attack Spain in the New World. 

Finally Philip turned savagely upon England. Drake ruined 
his first preparations for invasion by sailing daringly into the 
harbor of Cadiz and burning the Spanish fleet, — " singeing 
the beard of the Spanish king," as the bold sea-rover described 
it. But in 1588 the " Invincible Armada," blessed by the pope, 
at last set sail for England. English ships of all sorts — mostly 
little merchant vessels hastily transformed into a war navy — • 



AND THE SPANISH ARMADA 625 

gathered in the Channel ; and, to the amazement of the world, 
the small but swift and better handled English vessels com- 
pletely outfought the great Spanish navy in a splendid nine 
days' sea fight. x\s the shattered Spaniards fled around the 
north of Scotland, a mighty storm completed their overthrow. 
Spain never recovered her supremacy on the sea, — and the 
way was prepared for the English colonization of America. 

To the chagrin of Spanish king and Roman pope, the mass of England 
English Catholics had proved more English than papal, and p^T^f^ t 
had rallied gallantly to the Queen ; and, for young Englishmen, 
the splendid struggle made Protestantism and patriotism seem 
much the same thing. The rising generation became largely 
Protestant; and before Elizabeth's death (1603) even the 
Puritan doctrines from Geneva and from Presbyterian Scotland 
had begun to spread widely. 

Ireland, the third part of the British Isles, remained Catholic. Ireland 
Henry II (p. 510) had tried to conquer Ireland ; but, until the 
time of the Tudors, the English really held only a little strip 
of land ("the English Pale") near Dublin. The rest of Ireland 
remained in the hands of native chieftains. In the seventh and 
eight centuries Irish schools had been the most famous in 
Europe ; but now constant war had rooted out the old begin- 
nings of Irish culture, and the Irish tribes were half barbarous. 

Henry VIII established English authority over most of the 
island and destroyed the monasteries, the chief remaining 
centers of industry and learning. Shortly before the Armada, 
Spain made attempts to use the island as a base from which 
to attack England. Alarmed to frenzy by this deadly peril 
at their back door, Elizabeth's generals then completed the 
military subjugation with atrocious cruelties. Tens of thou- 
sands of men, women, and children were killed, or perished of 
famine in the Irish bogs ; and great districts of the country 
were given to English nobles and gentry. Incessant feuds 
continued between the peasantry and these absentee landlords, 
and the Irish nation looked on the attempt to introduce the 



remains 
Catholic 



626 ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND 

Church of England as a part of the hated Enghsh tyranny. 
As English patriotism became identified with Protestantism, 
so, even more completely, Irish patriotism became identified 
with Catholicism. 

Elizabeth's reign was part of a period of important change in 
industry which will be treated later (p. 639). The reign is best 
known, however, for: (1) the religious changes we have been 
tracing, and (2) for the "Elizabethan Renaissance." 

Except for the "Oxford Reformers" (p. 598), England had 
lagged behind in the early Renaissance. But now it took a 
leading placo. Edmwid Spenser created a new form of English 
poetry in his Faerie Queene. And the splendor of the Elizabethan 
age found a climax in English drama, with Shakspere as the 
most resplendent star in the glorious galaxy that counted such 
other shining names as Marlowe, Greene, Beaumont, Fletcher, 
and Ben Jonson. Not less glorious, possibly even more 
important, was the scientific progress, of Harvey (p. 612) and 
Francis Bacon (p. 637). 

For Further Reading. — Green's History of the English People 
remains the best general account. Creighton's and Beesly's lives of 
Elizabeth are good short .biographies. 



CHAPTER LXI 

A CENTURY OF RELIGIOUS "WARS 

SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 

When Philip II succeeded his father (p. 610) as king of Philip II 
Spain and of the SiciHes, and master of the Netherlands, he °^ ^P^"^ 
was the most powerful and most absolute monarch in Europe. 
The Spanish infantry were the finest soldiery in the world. The 
Spanish navy was the unquestioned mistress of the ocean. 
Each year the great "gold fleet" filled Philip's coffers from 
the exhaustless wealth of the Americas. In 1580 the ruling 
family in Portugal died out, and that throne was seized by Philip 
— by virtue of a relationship to the extinct family. Portugal 
won back her independence by revolt, in 1640; but meantime 
her East India empire fell to Spain, and the Spanish boast that 
the sun never set upon Spanish dominions became literal fact. 
Philip himself was a plodding, cautious toiler, who worked like 
a clerk day after day in a bare room with a table and two stiff 
chairs. He was despotic, cruel, unscrupulous, ambitious, and 
an ardent Catholic. 

Charles V had disregarded the old liberties of the Netherlands The Dutch 
(p. 587), and had set up the Inquisition in that country with Rebellion 
frightful consequences. Protestant writers used to claim that 
from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand men and women 
were burned, strangled, or buried alive within the Netherlands 
during Charles' reign. These numbers appear to be mere 
guesses ; but the actual facts were horrible. Still the great 
majority of the people had been attached to Charles as their 
native sovereign, and had felt a warm loyalty to his government. 
Philip continued all his father's abuses, without possessing any 
of his redeeming qualities in Dutch eyes. He was a foreign 

627 



628 



A CENTURY OF RELIGIOUS WARS 



master — not a Hollander by birth as Charles had been — 
and he ruled from a distance and through Spanish officers. 
Finally, Protestant and Catholic nobles joined in demands for 
reform and especially that they might be ruled by officers from 
their own people. 

Philip's reply was to send the stern Spanish general, Alva, 
with a veteran Spanish armj^, to enforce submission. Alva's 
council is known as the Council of Blood. It declared almost 
the whole population guilty of rebellion, and deserving of death 
with confiscation of goods. iVlva proceeded to enforce this 
atrocious sentence by butchering great numbers — especially 
of the wealthy classes — • and in 1568 a revolt began. 

The struggle between the little disunited provinces and the huge 
world-empire lasted forty years. In the beginning the conflict 
was for political liberty, but it soon became also a religious 
struggle. It was waged with an exasperated fury that made 
it a byword for ferocity even in that brutal age. City after 
city was given up to indiscriminate rapine and massacre, with 
deeds of horror indescribable. Over against this dark side 
stands the stubborn heroism of the Dutch people, hardly 
matched in history, — a heroism which saved not themselves 
only, but also the cause of Protestantism and of political liberty 
for the world, and made their little spot of sea-rescued land a 
true "holy land" to all who love freedom. 

William, Prince of Orange, was the central hero of the conflict. 
Because he foiled his enemies so often by wisely keeping his plans 
to himself, he is known as William the Silent ; and his persistency 
and statesmanship have fitly earned him the name " the Dutch 
Washington." Again and again, he seemed to be crushed ; but 
from each defeat he snatched a new chance for victory. 

The turning point of the war was the relief of Leyden (1574). 
For many months the city had been closely besieged. The 
people had devoured the cats and rats and were dying grimly 
of starvation. Once they murmured, but the heroic burgo- 
master (mayor) shamed them, declaring they might have his 
body to eat, but while he lived they should never surrender 



HOLLAND AND SPAIN 629 

to the Spanish butchers. All attempts to relieve the perishing 
town had failed. But fifteen miles away, on the North Sea, 
rode a Dutch fleet with supplies. Then William the Silent cut 
the dikes and let in the ocean on the land. Over wide districts 
the prosperity of years was engulfed in ruin ; but the waves 
swept also over the Spanish camp, and upon the invading sea 
the relieving ships rode to the city gates. Dutch liberty was 
saved. 

Never again was Spain so near success, though the war lasted 
many years longer. In 1584, by a dastardly offer of immense 
reward, Philip II found an assassin to murder William the 
Silent ; but another great antagonist was just ready to enter 
the conflict. 

Holland had been fighting England's battle as well as her England 
own : only the Dutch war had kept Philip from attacking ^ Hoilai 
England. Englishmen knew this ; and, for years, hundreds 
of English volunteers had been flocking to join the Dutch 
army. Elizabeth herself had many times helped the Dutch 
by secret supplies of money, and now in 1585 she sent a small 
English army to their aid. This was the immediate signal for 
the Spanish Armada ; and the overthrow of Spain's naval su- 
premacy by the heroic English sea dogs (p. 625) added tre- 
mendously to Holland's chances. True the ten southern prov- 
inces of the old Netherlands finally gave up the struggle, and 
returned to Spanish allegiance. They were largely French 
in race and Catholic in religion. Protestantism was now com- 
pletely stamped out in them. After this time, they are known 
as the Spanish Netherlands, and finally as modern Belgium. 

The seven northern provinces — Dutch in blood and Prot- Dutch 

estant in religion — maintained the conflict, and won their ^^ ^^^^ 
o . ' ^ ence 

independence as The United Provinces, or the Dutch Republic 
— though that independence was not formally recognized by 
Catholic Europe for half a century more. The government 
consisted of a representative "States General" and a "Stadt- 
holder" (President). The most important of the seven prov- 
inces was Holland, by whose name the union was often known. 



630 A CENTURY OF RELIGIOUS WARS 

The most marvelous feature of the struggle between the little 
Dutch state and Spain was that Holland grew wealthy during 
the contest, although the stage of the desolating war. The 
Dutch drew their riches not from the wasted land, but from the 
sea ; and during the war they plundered the possessions of Spain 
in the East Indies. The little republic built up a vast colonial 
empire, and held almost a monopoly of the Asiatic trade for all 
Europe. One hundred thousand of their three million people 
lived constantly upon the sea. 

Success in so heroic a war stimulated the people to a wonder- 
ful intellectual and industrial activity. Holland taught all 
Europe scientific agriculture and horticulture, as well as the 
science of navigation. In the seventeenth century the presses 
of Holland are said to have put forth more books than all the 
rest of Europe. Motley sums up this wonderful career, 

"The splendid empire of Charles V was erected upon the grave of 
liberty. . . . But from the hand-breadth of territory called Holland, 
rises a power which wages eighty years' warfare with the most potent 
empire upon the earth [Peace was not made, formally, until 1609], and 
which, during the struggle, becomes itself a mighty state, and, binding 
about its slender form a zone of the richest possessions of the earth, 
from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire of Charles." 

On the other hand, Spain sank rapidly into a second-rate 
power. The bigot, Philip III, drove into exile the Christianized 
Moors, the descendants of those Mohammedans left behind 
when the Moorish political power had been driven out. These 
Moriscoes numbered more than half a million, — perhaps 
a twentieth of the entire population, — and they were the 
foremost agriculturalists and almost the sole skilled artisans 
and manufacturers. Their pitiless expulsion inflicted a deadly 
blow upon the prosperity of Spain. 

For a time the wealth she drew from America concealed her 
fall, and she continued to furnish money for the Catholic Powers 
through the Thirty Years' War (p. 633). But after the Armada 
she never played a great part in Europe. Living on the plunder 
of the New World, she failed to develop industrial life. The 



THE FRENCH HUGUENOTS 631 

Inquisition "sifted out the most flexible minds and stoutest 
hearts," and so stamped out intellectual life. And a once 
virile race sank into apathy and decay. 

WARS OP THE FRENCH HUGUENOTS 

The French Protestants were Calvinists, and are known as The Hugue- 
Huguenots. By 1560, they counted one man out of twenty in °°*^ 
the population ; and (because Calvinism appealed by its logic 
mainly to intellectual people) their numbers were made up 
almost wholly from the nobles and the wealthy middle class of 
the towns. Francis I and his son, Henry II, persecuted the 
new faith, bat not continuously enough to crush it. 

Henry was followed by his three sons, — Francis II, Charles Guises and 
IX, and Henry III, — all weak in body and in mind. During °"^ °^^ 
their reigns (1559-1589), power was disputed between two groups 
of great lords. Each was closely related to the failing royal 
family, and each hoped to place a successor upon the throne. 
One was Catholic ; the other Protestant. In the background 
was the chief figure of all, the crafty and cruel Queen-mother, 
Catherine of Medici, who played off one party against the other 
in whatever way might best promote her own control over her 
feeble sons. 

War between the two factions opened in 1562 and lasted, The 

with brief truces, to 1598. Even more than the other struggles ^^Jartholo- 

of the period, it was marked by assassinations and treacheries, mew's Day, 

The most horrible event of this character was the Massacre of ^"2"^* ^4- 

•' 1572 

8t. Bartholomew. 

An honest attempt had just been made to establish a lasting 
peace. A marriage had been arranged between the sister of 
King Charles IX and the young Henry, the Huguenot king of 
Navarre (a small border state on the south of France) ; and, too, 
the grandest Frenchman of the age, the Protestant Coligny, 
became one of Charles' chief counselors. But Catherine of 
Medici, jealous of his influence, soon roused the Catholic party 
to fresh strife. 



632 



A CENTURY OF RELIGIOUS WARS 



An attempt to assassinate Coligny failed, and the king 
threatened vengeance for the attack. Then the conspirators, 
to save themselves, played upon his religious bigotry with a 
plot to cleanse France from heresy at one blow; and his con- 
sent was finally won for a general massacre of the Huguenots. 
Large numbers of that sect were assembled in Paris to witness 
the marriage of their chief ; and at the appointed moment, the 
mob of Paris bathed in Huguenot blood. Ten thousand victims 
fell in France. 

Henry of Navarre escaped ; and, on the death of the French 
king, in 1589, he was the heir to the throne. But he did not 
become king of France, as Henry IV, until after four years 
more of civil war. Philip II of Spain aided the Catholic League. 
He hoped to seat a puppet on the French throne and virtually 
add that country to the realms of Spain. But in Henry of 
Navarre he met the third of the three great leaders on whom 
his imperial schemes went to wreck. Henry drove the Spanish 
army in shameful rout from France in the dashing cavalry 
battle of Ivry. Then, to secure Paris, which he had long be- 
sieged (and to give peace to his distracted country), he accepted 
Catholicism, declaring lightly that "so fair a city" was "well 
worth a mass." 

In 1598 Henry's Edict of Nantes established toleration for 
the Huguenots. They were to have perfect liberty of conscience 
in private, and to enjoy the privilege of public worship except 
in the cathedral cities. And certain towns were handed over to 
them, to hold with their own garrisons, as a security for their 
rights. This last measure was no doubt needful, but it carried 
with it a political danger : it set up a state within a state, and 
threatened the unity of France. 

Henry IV proved one of the greatest of French kings, and he 
was one of the most loved. With his sagacious minister, the 
Duke of Sully, he set himself to restore prosperity to desolated 
France. One of his treasured sayings was, that if he lived, 
the poorest peasant should have a fowl in the pot on a Sunday. 
Roads and canals were built ; new trades were fostered ; and 



Richelieu 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR IN GERMANY 633 

under the blessings of a firm government, the industry of the 
French people once more with marvelous rapidity removed the 
evil results of the long strife. In 1610 Henry was assassinated 
by a half-insane Catholic fanatic. 

Henry's son, Louis XHI, was a boy of nine years. Anarchy Cardinal 
again raised its head ; but France was saved by the commanding 
genius of Cardinal Richelieu, who became the chief minister of 
the young king. Richelieu was a sincere patriot ; and, though an 
earnest Catholic, his statesmanship was guided by political, 
not by religious, motives. He crushed the great nobles and he 
waged war upon the Huguenots to deprive them of their gar- 
risoned towns, which menaced the unity of France. But when 
he had captured their cities and held the Huguenots at his 
mercy, he kept toward them in full the other pledges of the 
Edict of Nantes. He also aided the German Protestants 
against the Catholic emperor, in the religious war that was going 
on in Germany, in order to seize territory from the emperor for 
France. 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR IN GERMANY (1618-1648) 

For sixty years after the Peace of Augsburg, while France The Thirty 
and the Netherlands were torn by war, there was uneasy peace -f^i^ T^a^' 
in Germany. Then, in 1618, came the last of the great religious 
wars, just a century after Luther posted his theses at Witten- 
berg. It is known as the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and 
it was the most destructive and terrible war in all history until 
the World War. 

The signal for the struggle was an attempt of Protestant Bohemia 
Bohemia to make itself independent of the Catholic Hapsburg 
empire. Bohemian independence lasted only a few weeks ; 
but this was long enough to call all Germany into two armed 
camps. The Protestant German princes, however, showed 
themselves disunited, timid, and incapable; and, had the war 
been left to Germany, a Catholic victory would soon have been 
assured. But all over Europe sincere and religious Protestants 



rebels 



634 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR IN GERMANY 



felt deeply and truly that the war against the Catholic Hapsburgs 
was their own war — much as all free peoples have felt in this 
last war when liberty was imperiled by HohenzoUern autoc- 
racy. First Denmark (1625-1629) and then Sweden (1630) 
entered the field in behalf of the Protestant cause ; and at last 
(1635-1648) Catholic France under Richelieu threw its weight 
also against the Hapsburgs who so long had ringed France about 
with hostile arms. 

The war was marked by the career of four great generals, — 
Tilly and Wallenstein on the imperial side, and Gustavus 
Adolphus, king of Sweden, "the Lion of the North," and Mans- 
feld, on the side of the Protestants. Gustavus was at once 
great and admirable ; but he fell at the battle of Liitzen (1632), 
in the moment of victory; and thereafter the struggle was as 
dreary as it was terrible. Mansfeld and Wallenstein from 
the first deliberately adopted the policy of making the war pay, 
by supporting their armies everyivhere upon the country; but 
during the short career of Gustavus, his blond Swede giants 
were held in admirable discipline, with the nearest approach to a 
regular commissariat that had been known since Roman times. 

The calamities the war brought were monstrous. It was a 
blasting ruin, from which Germany had not fully recovered in 
the middle of the nineteenth century. Season by season, for a 
generation of human life, armies of ruthless freebooters harried 
the land with fire and sword. The peasant found that he toiled 
only to feed robbers and to draw them to outrage and torture 
his family ; so he ceased to labor, and became himself robber or 
camp-follower. Half the population and two thirds the movable 
property of Germany were swept away. In many large districts, 
the facts were worse than this average. The Duchy of Wurtem- 
berg had fifty thousand people left out of five hundred thousand. 
In Bohemia, thirty thousand happy villages had shrunk to 
six thousand miserable ones, and the rich promise of the great 
University of Prague was ruined. Everywhere populous cities 
shriveled into hamlets ; and for miles upon miles, former ham- 
lets were the lairs of wolf packs. Land tilled for centuries 



1 



















THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA, 1648 635 

became wilderness. And men became savages. The genera- 
tion that survived the war came to manhood without schools 
or churches or law or orderly industry. Not until 1850 did 
some sections of Germany again contain as many homesteads 
and cattle as in 1618. 

The war was closed by the Peace of Westphalia. This treaty Peace of 
was drawn up by a congress of ambassadors from nearly every Westphalia 
European Power. It contained three distinct classes of stipu- 
lations : provisions for religious peace in Germany ; territorial 
rewards for France and Sweden; and provisions to secure the 
independence of the German princes against the Empire. 

1. The ■principle of the Peace of Augsburg was reaffirmed and 
extended. Each sovereign prince in Germany was to choose his 
religion ; and his subjects were to have three years to conform 
to his choice or to withdraw from his realm. Many of the 
South German Protestants were then driven into exile by their 
Catholic lords. This was the first cause of the coming to 
America of the "Pennsylvania Dutch." 

2. Sweden, which was already a great Baltic power, extend- 
ing around both the east and west shores of that sea (p. 55), 
secured also on the south coast Pomerania — with the mouths 
of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser. This gave Sweden control over 
German commerce. France annexed most of Alsace, with some 
fortresses on the German bank of the Rhine. The Congress 
also expressly recognized the independence of Switzerland and 
of the Dutch Provinces. 

3. The Empire lost more than mere territory. Various political 
rearrangements within Germany made clear its weakness. The 
separate states were given the right to form alliances with 
one another or even with foreign powers. The imperial Diet 
became avowedly a gathering of ambassadors for discussion, but 
not for government : no state was to be bound by decisions there 
without its own consent. 



636 



THE AGE OF RELIGIOUS WARS 



The religious wars filled a century — from the struggle between 
the German princes and Charles V (1546) to the Peace of West- 
phalia (1648). The Romance South was left Catholic, and the 
Teutonic North, Protestant. France emerged stronger than ever, 
quite equal in power to any two states of Europe. England 
and Sweden had both risen into "Great Powers." Two new 
federal republics had been added to the European family of 
nations, — Switzerland and the United Provinces ; and the 
second of these was one of the leading "Powers." The danger 
of a universal Hapsburg empire was forever gone. Spain, the 
property of one Hapsburg branch, had sunk from the first 
place in Europe to a third-rate power. The Holy Roman 
Empire, the realm of the other branch, was an open sham, 
— "neither Holy nor Roman nor even an empire." Far to the 
east loomed indistinctly a huge and growing Russian state. 



This age of wars and persecution in religion, almost without 
notice at the time, was also an age of advance in science which 
was to change the life of men and women more than the wars 
of Wallenstein and Gustavus. The new methods which Eras- 
mus had used in history began to be used now in the natural 
sciences. 

All men had believed the earth to be the center of the uni- 
verse, with siin and stars moving around it. But in 1543 a 
Polish astronomer, Copernicus, published a book proving that 
the earth was only one member . of a solar system which had 
the sun for its center. This discovery not only revolutionized 
astronomy : it helped also to revolutionize thought about man 
and the world, by opening up such immensities of worlds and 
such possibilities of other forms of life as had never before been 
dreamed of. Half a century before, Columbus had discovered 
"a New World": Copernicus revealed a new universe. 

From fear of persecution, Copernicus had kept his discovery 
to himself for many years, until just before his death when the 
"religious wars" were just beginning. Those wars for a long 
time destroyed all chance of scientific development in much of 



THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 637 

Europe; and, in another way, scientific thought was checked 
even more completely in the Catholic countries. At the open- 
ing of the Renaissance, the popes had been among the most ac- 
tive patrons of the new movement ; but now the reaction against 
Protestant revolt threw control into conservative hands, and 
the church used its tremendous power for a time to stifle the 
new science. 

Still, much was accomplished. In Italy, Galileo (1564-1642) "The 

discovered the laws of the pendulum and of falling bodies (as ^°^^* , „ 

_ ° ^ moves I 

they are now taught in our high school text books), invented the 

thermometer, and, using a hint from a Holland plaything, 

constructed the first real telescope. He had adopted the 

Copernican theory of the universe, and with his telescope 

he was able to devionstrate its truth by showing the " ■phases" of 

Venus in her revolution about the sun. True, his teachings 

were considered dangerous and unsupported by Scripture. 

He was summoned to Rome, imprisoned, and forced publicly 

to abjure his teaching that the earth moved around the sun. 

But as he rose from his knees, he whispered to a friend, " None 

the less, it does move." 

In other ways than around the sun, Galileo's world was The 

moving swiftly. More important than any specific discovery ^^^^°^ •>' 

_ , experiment 

about the sun or the human body was the discovery of a new 

way of finding out truth. For centuries scholars had tried to 

learn only by reading ancient authorities, and perhaps by 

reasoning a little further, in their own minds, upon what these 

authorities taught. But the new discoveries had been made in 

another way; and now, Francis Bacon, in England, set forth 

eloquently the necessity of experiment to discover new facts. 

And before 1700, in Italy, France, and England, great scientific 

societies were founded, to' encourage scientific investigation. 

Scientific method urns horn. 

Still, for more than a century, the new discoveries reached 

a very small part of even the most enlightened nations. The 

average Puritan, for instance, who settled Massachusetts 

just in Galileo's day, believed the earth a flat surface 



638 THE DISCOVERY OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 

lighted by sun and stars that moved around it. Francis Bacon 
himself, almost a century after Copernicus, never knew that the 
earth revolved around the sun ; and, Englishman though he was, 
he had never heard of Harvey's discoveries — and believed that 
an ape's heart, worn on a man's breast, would make him brave. 
A new truth, in those times, did not get the world's attention 
in a day. 

For Further Reading. — It is not worth while for the student 
to read on the wars, except for Holland. The Student's Motley is an 
admirable and brief condensation of Motley's great history of the 
Dutch Republic. 

Exercise. — 1. Dates for rapid drill: 1520, 1588, 1648. 2. Re- 
view the Reformation as a whole in each country to the close of the 
religious wars. 



PART X 

ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

CHAPTER LXII 

ENGLISH INDUSTRY IN 1600 

The century and a half from 1450 to 1600 (filled in England Changes in 
by the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor reigns) was a period ^'^cn-^doo 
of tremendous change. (1) The Renaissance created a new 
intellectual life, with the spontaneous energy and the abounding 
self-reliance that we associate with Shakspere and Elizabeth 
and Raleigh. (2) The reformation introduced new church 
organization and new religious feeling. (3) On the ruins of 
the two chief political forces of earlier times, — feudalism and 
the church, — the sovereigns built up a " New Monarchy " 
(p. 575). (4) Industry was revolutionized in town and coun- 
try. The first three changes have been treated, but the indus- 
trial change was the most fundamental of all. 

The golden age for English peasants was the half century The change 
from 1450 to 1500, just after the disappearance of villeinage. 
The small farmer lived in rude abundance ; and even the farm 
laborer had his cow, sheep, or geese on the common, his four- 
acre patch of garden about his cabin, and good wages for his 
labor on the landlord's fields. Sir John Fortescue (p. 573) 
boasts of this prosperity, as compared with that of the French 
peasantry : " They [English peasants] drink no water, unless 
at times by way of penance. They are fed in great abundance 
with all kinds of flesh and fish. They are clothed in good 
woolens. . . . Every one, according to his rank, hath all 
things needful to make life easy and happy." 

639 



640 ENGLISH INDUSTRY IN 1600 

The large landlords had been relatively, less prosperous. 
Since the rise of their old laborers out of villeinage, they were 
"land-poor." They paid high wages, while, under the waste- 
ful common-field system, crops were small (p. 486). 

But by 1500 a change had begun which enriched the land- 
lords and cruelly depressed the peasants. This change was the 
process of "inclosures" for sheep raising. There was a steady 
demand for wool at good prices to supply the Flemish markets 
(p. 587), and enterprising landlords began to raise sheep instead 
of grain. Large flocks could be cared for by a few hands, 
so that the high wages mattered less ; and profits proved 
so enticing that soon there was a mad rush into the new 
industry. 

But sheep-raising called for large tracts of land. It was pos- 
sible only for the great landlords ; and even these were obliged 
to hedge in their share of the common "fields." Therefore, 
as far as possible, they turned out small tenants whose holdings 
interfered with such "inclosures," and often they inclosed also 
the woodlands and meadows, in disregard of ancient rights of 
common pasture. Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia (p. 600), 
lamented these conditions bitterly : 

"A careless and unsatiable cormorant may compass about and 
inclose many thousand acres within one pale, and the husbandmen be 
thrust out of their own ; or else by fraud, or violent oppression, or by 
wrongs and injuries, they be so worried that they be compelled to sell. . . . 
They [the landlords] throw down houses ; they pluck down towns [vil- 
lages], and leave nothing standing but only the church, to be made a 
sheep-house." Then of the peasants, driven from their homes: 

"By one means or another, either by hook or by crook, they must 
needs depart, poor wretched souls — men, women, husbands, wives, 
fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers with young babes. . . . All 
their household stuff . . . suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to 
sell it for a thing of nought. And when they have wandered till that be 
spent, what can they then else do but steal, and then justly, pardy, be 
hanged, or else go about begging ? And yet then also they be cast into 
prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not, — whom no 
man will set to work though thej^ never so willingly proffer themselves 
thereto." 



SHEEP REPLACE YEOMEN 641 

Other statesman, too, bewailed that sheep should take the Decay of 
place of the yeomanry who had won Crecy and Poitiers, and t 
who, Bacon said, were also " the backbone of the revenue " ; 
and the government made many attempts to check inclosures. 
But law availed nothing. Nor did peasant risings and riots 
help. On the other hand, Henry VIH's transfer of monastery 
lands to greedy private landlords increased the inclosure move- 
ment tremendously ; and it went on until the profits of sheep- 
raising and grain-raising found a level. 

This came to pass before 1600. The wool market was sup- 
plied, and the growth of town populations raised the price of . 
grain. These towns, as we shall explain (p. 642), became the 
basis for a new sort of prosperity for England, and the land 
changes created a wealthy landed gentry, to take a glittering 
part in society and politics. 

But this new "prosperity" had a somber background. Half 
of the villages in England had lost heavily in population, and 
many had been wholly swept away. Great numbers of the 
peasants, driven from their homes, became "sturdy beggars" 
(tramps) ; . and all laborers ivere thrust down to a loioer standard 
of life, because the cost of food and clothing rose twice as fast 
as wages. 

More than before even, rural England had become a land- 
lord's country. One reason why wages stayed so low was that 
the gentleman "justices of the peace," appointed by the crown, 
were given power to ^ wages for farm work. And when tramps 
spread terror through the rural districts, the justices hung them 
in batches. In fifty years, in the glorious day of Shakspere 
and Elizabeth, seventy thousand "beggars" were executed. 

These conditions explain in part why so many English- 
men were eager to go to America. John Winthrop, the great 
Puritan leader of the Massachusetts colony (himself from the 
prosperous landlord class), declared "England grows weary of 
her inhabitants, so as man who is the most precious of God's 
creatures, is here more vile and base than the earth we tread 
upon and of less prize among us than a horse or an ox." 



642 



RISE OF ENGLISH MANUFACTURES 



Meantime, England was becoming a manufacturing country. 
From the time of the Yorkist kings, the sovereigns had made 
the towns their special care. Elizabeth welcomed gladly the 
skilled workmen driven from the Netherlands by the Spanish 
wars, and from France by the persecution of the Huguenots, 
Colonies of these foreign artisans were given their special 
quarter in many an English city, with many favors, and were 
encouraged to set up there their manufactures, of which Eng- 
land had previously known almost nothing. Raw English 
wool was no longer sold abroad. It was worked up at home. 
These new manufactures gave employment to great numbers 
of workmen, and finally absorbed the classes driven from the 
land. 

This manufacturing fostered commerce. By 1600, England 
was sending to distant markets not merely raw materials as 
formerly, but her finished products. "Merchants" ^ increased 
in wealth and in numbers, so as to form a new class in society. 
In 1350 a royal inquiry could find a list of only 169 important 
merchants in England. In 1601 more than twenty times that 
number were engaged in the Holland trade alone. 

By purchase of land and by royal gifts from the confiscated 
monastery property, many members of this class rose also into 
the new gentry ; and their capital and energy helped greatly 
to ] estore landed prosperity. 

1 A "merchant" was a trader who sent goods to a foreign country. Com- 
panies were formed to trade with Russia, or India, or other distant parts of 
the world : and sometimes a single merchant owned a considerable fleet of 
ships for such trade (cf. Shakspere's Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice). 



CHAPTER LXIII 

PURITAN ENGLAND — UNDER THE FIRST STUARTS 

At every moment some one country, more than any other, represents the 
future and the welfare of mankind. — Emerson. 

For two generations after 1600, the burning questions in Eng- 
lish politics and religion had to do with Puritanism. Within the 
established Episcopal church the dominant party had strong 
"High-church" leanings. It wished to restore so far as pos- 
sible the ceremonial of the old Catholic church, and it taught 
that the government of the church by bishops had been di- 
rectly ordained by God. This party was ardently supported 
by the royal "head of the church" — Elizabeth, James, Charles, 
in turn ; but it was engaged in constant struggle with a large, 
aggressive Puritan party. 

Puritanism was much more than a religious sect. It was an Puritanism 
ardent aspiration for reform in many lines. In politics it stood 
for an advance in popular rights ; in conduct, for stricter and 
higher morality ; in theology, for the stern doctrines of Calvin ; 
in church matters, for an extension of the "reformation" that 
had cut off the English church from Rome. 

Two groups of Puritans stood in sharp opposition to each "Low- 
other, — the influential " Low-church " element within the '^^^^^^ 

non-con- 
church, and the despised Separatists outside of it. The Low- formists 

churchmen had no wish to separate church and state. They 
wanted one national church — a Low-church church — to which 
everybody within England should be forced to conform. They 
desired also to make the church a more far-reaching moral 
power. To that end, they aimed to introduce more preaching 
into the service, to simplify ceremonies, and to abolish alto- 
gether certain customs which they called "Romish," — the 

643 



644 



PURITAN ENGLAND 



use of the surplice, and of the ring in marriage, of the sign of 
the cross in baptism, and (some of them) of the prayer-book. 
Most of them did not care as yet to change radically the estab- 
lished form of church government; but they looked upon all 
church machinery not as divinely instituted, as the High- 
churchmen did, but as of human origin. Some of them had 
begun, indeed, to speak with scant respect of bishops, and there 
was a subdivision among them inclined to the Presbyterian church 
government, as it existed in Scotland. It is this large Low- 
church branch of Puritanism with which in the seventeenth 
century English history is mainly concerned. 

The Independents (or "Puritans of the Separation") believed 
that there should be no national church, but that each local 
religious organization should be a little democratic society, 
wholly separate from the civil government, and even independent 
of other churches. These Independents were the Puritans of 
the Puritans. They were the germs of later Congregation- 
alism. To all other sects they seemed mere anarchists in 
religion. Elizabeth persecuted them savagely, and her suc- 
cessor continued that policy. Some of the Independent churches 
fled to Holland ; and one of them, from Scrooby in northern 
England, after staying several years at Leyden, founded Plym- 
outh in America (the "Pilgrims" of 1620), — and so pointed 
the way for the larger Low-church emigration to Massachusetts 
Bay ten years later. 



Political liberty in England had fallen low under the Tudors. 
True, no law could be made without consent of Parliament ; 
and that body controlled all new grants of money. But the 
monarch (or his ministers) prepared nearly all measures that 
came before Parliament ; he could veto any act of Parliament ; 
and, after a law had been made, he sometimes nullified it by 
special proclamations. Moreover, the monarch had so many 
ways of injuring a private man that it was extremely hazardous 
for any one persistently to oppose him. , 

But; after all^ Henry VIII and Elizabeth had ruled absolutely, 



AND JAMES I 



645 



only because they made use of constitutional forms (p. 576) and 
because they possessed a shrewd tact which taught them just 
where to stop. Moreover, toward the close of EUzabeth's 
reign, when foreign perils were past, the tone of Parliament began 
to rise again. Men spoke boldly of checks upon the royal 
power; and Parliament and the courts forced the great queen 
to give up her pet practice of granting trade monopolies to 
her favorites. It was plain to keen observers that only the 
reverence for Elizabeth's age and sex, and the gratitude due 
her for her great services to the kingdom, held off an open 
clash between sovereign and Parliament. Upon her death, 
the clash began, — to last eighty-five years. 

Elizabeth was succeeded by James I (James Stuart), already 
king of Scotland (footnote, p. 616). James was learned and 
conceited, — "the wisest fool in Christendom," as Henry IV 
of France called him. He believed sincerely in the "divine 
right" of kings. That is, he believed that the king, as God's 
anointed, was the source of law and could not himself be con- 
trolled by law. He wrote a pompous and tiresome book to 
prove this. He and his son after him not only practiced ab- 
solutism, but they also preached it on every occasion. They 
were despots on principle. The nation had been growing restive 
under the cloaked, beneficent, elastic tyranny of the strong 
Tudors : naturally it rose in fierce opposition against the 
noisy, needless, and uncompromising tyranny of the weak 
Stuarts. From 1603, when the first James mounted the throne, 
until 1688, when his grandson, the second James, ignominiously 
ran away from it, England was engaged in strife between this 
"divine right" of kings and the right of the people. 

Through all that seventeenth century, too, this little patch 
of land was the last remaining battle ground for liberty. In 
all other important states, — in Spain, in France, in Austria, 
in the Scandinavian lands, in the petty principalities of Ger- 
many and Italy, — despotism was supreme. In England both 
sides recognized this fact. Said the second Stuart king, Charles 
I, in a crisis of his reign, "I am ashamed that my cousins of 



The 

" divine- 
right " 
Stuart 
kings 



And the 
English 
people 



646 



PURITAN ENGLAND 



France and Spain should have completed what I have scarce 
begun." And at the same time a patriot exclaimed in ex- 
hortation to his party, "England is the last country which 
retains her ancient liberties ; let them not perish now." 

There were, as yet, no organized political parties. But there 
was a " court party," devoted to the royal power, consisting of 
most of the nobles and of the "High Church" clergy, and an 
opposition "country party," consisting of the mass of country 
gentry, some Puritan nobles, and the Puritan element generally. 

Now the issue between the two was promptly stated. In the 
first few weeks of his new sovereignty, James gave several 
practical proofs of his disregard for law and of his arbitrary 
temper. On his royal entry from Scotland, he ordered a thief 
to be hanged without trial; and when he summoned his first 
Parliament he ordered that contested elections should be 
settled, not hy Parliament as formerly, but by his courts. And 
then in a famous utterance, he summed up his theory : " As 
it is atheism and blasphemy in a creature to dispute what God 
can do, so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to 
question what a king can do." This became the tone of the 
court party. 

Parliament took the first chance to answer these despotic 
claims. The king, as usual, opened the session with a "speech 
from the throne." In reply, in place of the usual thanks to 
his Majesty, the Speaker of the Commons reminded James 
bluntly of his limited powers. "New laws," said the Speaker, 
"cannot be instituted, nor imperfect laws reformed ... by 
any other power than this high court of Parliament." The 
Commons backed up this speech by a long paper, setting forth 
popular rights in detail and asserting that the privileges of 
Englishmen were their inheritance "no less than their lands 
and goods." James seldom called Parliaments after this, and 
only when he had to have money. Whenever he did, there was 
wrangling between Parliament and king. 

Fortunately, the regular royal revenues had never been 
much increased, while the rise in prices and the wider duties 



SIR JOHN ELIOT 647 

of government called for more money than in former times. 
Both Elizabeth and James were poor. Elizabeth, however, had 
been economical and thrifty. James was careless and waste- 
ful, and could not get along without new taxes. 

Thus Parliament was able to hold its own. It insisted stub- 
bornly on its control of taxation, on freedom of speech, and on 
its right to impeach the king's ministers. In the Parliament 
of 1621, the Commons expressed dissatisfaction with a mar- 
riage that James had planned for his son Charles with a Span- 
ish princess. James roughly forbade them to discuss such 
"high matters of state." "Let us resort to our prayers," said 
one of the members, "and then consider this great business." 
The outcome of the consideration was a resolution, " (1) that 
the liberties, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the 
ancient and undoubted birthright of the subjects of England ; 
and (2) that the arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king, 
the state, the church, the defense of the realm, the making and 
maintenance of laws, and the redress of grievances, which happen 
daily within this realm, are proper subjects for debate in Parlia- 
ment; and (3) that in the handling and proceeding of those 
businesses, every member of the Commons . . . has freedom of 
speech ... to bring to conclusion the same." 

James tore out this page of the records and dissolved Parlia- 
ment. But Charles was personally insulted by the Spanish 
court, where he had gone to visit the princess ; and in the 
last year of James' life the prince succeeded in forcing him into 
war with Spain — to the boundless joy of the nation. 

In 1625, in the midst of shame and disgrace because of mis- The early 
management of the war, James died. In May, Charles I met 
his first Parliament. He quarreled with it at once, dissolved 
it, and turned to an eager prosecution of the war, trusting to 
win the nation to his side by glorious victory. Shameful failure, 
instead, forced him to meet his second Parliament in 1626. 

It is now that Sir John Eliot stands forth as leader of the 
patriots. Eliot is the "first great Commoner." In her earlier 
struggles with her kings, England had depended upon noble§ 



Parliaments 
of Charles I 



648 



PURITAN ENGLAND 



for leaders. The Tudor monarchs had begun to use members 
from the rising gentry as ministers of the crown. Now one of 
this class was to lead the opposition to the crown. 

Eliot wa§ a Cornish gentleman, thirty-three years of age, 
courtly in manner, ardent and poetic in temper. His mind 
was enriched by all the culture of the "New Learning," and 
afterward in weary years of imprisonment he found consola- 
tion in his Tacitus, Livy, 
Epictetus, and Seneca. 
He was an athlete and a 
courtier, and at the same 
time a deeply religious 
Puritan ; but his mind 
was never tinged with the 
somber feeling of later 
Puritanism. 

Eliot stood for the control 
of the king's ministers by 
Parliament. Everything 
else, he saw, was likely to 
prove worthless, if the ex- 
ecutive could not be held 
responsible. The Icing's 
person could not be so 
held, except by revolution, 
but his ministers might be 
impeached and, under fear 
of this, they might be held 
in control. So Eliot persuaded the Commons to impeach the 
Duke of Buckingham, the king's favorite and the instrument 
of much past tyranny. Charles stopped the proceedings by 
casting Eliot into prison — in plain defiance of parliamentary 
privileges — and dissolving Parliament. 

The king fell back upon "benevolences" to raise a revenue. 
This was a device that originated during the Wars of the Roses 
two centuries before. During those long struggles, Parliament 




Charles I. — After a famous portrait 
by Van Dyck. 



AND CHARLES I 649 

could not meet regularly and taxes could not be collected. 
A king had to depend therefore, for long intervals, not upon 
parliamentary taxes, but upon "good-will" gifts (benevolences) 
from men of wealth in his party. The first king after the war, 
the Yorkist Edward IV, continued from choice to collect benev- 
olences as he met rich men in his progresses through the king- 
dom ; and the first Tudor, Henry VII, reduced the thing to 
a system. Through his minister, Morton, he sent out written 
demands to rich men over all England.^ 

England deeply resented this method of "supply," because 
thereby a king was plainly made independent of parliamentary 
control. And so the young Henry VIII at his accession, despot 
as he was, sought popularity by formally giving lip the evil 
practice and even handing over Morton, the tool of his father's 
extortion, for execution. 

Now, a century later, Charles revived the evil practice, and 
had his sheriffs in the county courts ask benevolences from all 
taxpayers. But county after county refused to give a penny, 
often with cheers for Parliament. Some sheriffs refused to 
ask for the "free gift." The County of Cornwall (Sir John 
Eliot's county) answered "that if they had but two kine, they 
would sell one to supply his majesty, — in a parliamentary loay." 

Then Charles tried a "forced loan." This was really a tax The 
levied by the usual tax machinery, — a tax thinly disguised i„j.^" 
by the false royal promise to repay it. The king's party used 
both force and persuasion. Pulpits, manned now by the anti- 
Puritan party, rang with the cry that to resist the king was 
eternal damnation. As a patriot of the time put it, the " High- 
church" clergy "improved the highwayman's formula into 
'Your money or your life eternal.^" 

1 To some Morton said that their kixurious living showed that they were 
easily able to supply their king's needs ; to others, that their economy of 
life proved that they must have saved wherewith to aid their sovereign. 
Thus every man of consequence found himself impaled, the people said, on 
one prong or the other of "Morton's Fork." Perhaps the most important 
point of this story is that it reminds us of the recent introduction of forks 
(<it)o-pronged instruments) at table. Cf. p. 490. 



650 



PURITAN ENGLAND 



And Charles made use of more immediate penalties. Poor 
freeholders who refused to pay were "pressed" into the navy, 
or a turbulent soldiery was quartered in their defenseless homes ; 
and two hundred English gentlemen were confined in dis- 
graceful prisons, to subdue their obstinacy. One young squire, 
John Hampden, who had based his refusal to pay upon a clause 
in Magna Carta, was rewarded with so close an imprisonment 
that, his kinsman tells us, "he never did look the same man 
after." Equal heroism was shown by hundreds of unknown 
men. George Radcliffe wrote from his prison to his "right 
dear and loving wife" (who was eager to have him submit in 
time to have Christmas with her), "Shall it be thought I preju- 
dice the public cause by beginning to conform, which none yet 
hath done of all that have been committed [imprisoned], save 
only two poor men, a butcher and another, — a7id they, hooted 
at like owls among their neighbors !" 

The forced loan raised little revenue ; and with an armament 
poorly fitted out, Buckingham sailed against France, with 
which his blundering policy had brought England into war. 
For the third time in four years an English army was wasted 
to no purpose ; and, sunk in debt and shame, Charles met his 
third Parliament in 1628. Before the elections, the imprisoned 
country gentlemen were released, and some seventy of them (all 
who appeared as candidates) sat in the new Parliament, in spite 
of the royal efforts to prevent their election. 

Charles asked for money. Instead of giving it, the Com- 
mons debated the recent infringements of English liberties 
and some way to provide security in future. The king offered 
to give his word that such things should not occur again, but 
was reminded that he had already given his oath at his coro- 
nation. Finally the House passed "the Petition of Right," a 
document that ranks with Magna Carta in the history of Eng- 
lish liberty. This great law first recited the ancient statutes, 
from Magna Carta down, against arbitrary imprisonment, 
arbitrary taxation, quartering of soldiery upon the people in 
time of peace, and against forced loans and benevolences. Then 



THE PETITION OF RIGHT 651 

it named the frequent violations of right in these respects in 
recent years. And finally it declared all such infringements 
illegal. 

The Lords tried to save the king's dignity by adding a vague 
clause to the effect that Parliament did not intend to interfere 
with "that sovereign power wherewith your majesty is in- 
trusted." But the Commons rejected the amendment after 
a striking debate. "Sovereign power," said one, "would mean 
power above condition; they could not leave the king that, 
for he had never had it." " The king's person I will call sover- 
eign," said another, "but not his power"; and a third added, 
"Magna Carta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign." 
Finally, the Lords, too, passed the Petition, and Charles, after 
evasive delays, felt compelled to sign it. 

In form, the document was a petition : in fact, when passed, 
and assented to by the king, it became a revision of the consti- 
tution down to date, so far as the personal rights of Englishmen 
were concerned. Almost at once, however, in recess of Parlia- 
ment, Charles broke its provisions regarding taxes. ^ 

Parliament reassembled in bitter humor. Heedless of the Eliot's 
king's plea for money, it turned to punish the officers who had 
acted as his agents in the recent infringements of the Petition 
of Right. Then the Speaker stopped business by announcing 
that he had the king's command to adjourn the House.^ Men 
knew that it would not be permitted to meet again, and there 
followed a striking scene. Two of the patriots (Holies and 
Valentine) bounded to the Speaker, thrust him back into his 
chair and held him there.^ Sir Miles Hobart locked the doors 
against the king's messenger, putting the key in his pocket; 
and Eliot in a ringing speech moved a series of resolutions 
which were to form the platform of the liberal party in the dark 
years to come. Royalist members cried, Traitor ! Traitor ! 
Swords were drawn. Outside, an usher pounded at the door 

1 The king could adjourn the Parliament from time to time, or he could 
dissolve it, so that no Parliament could meet until after new elections. 
^ If the Speaker left the chair, business was at an end. 



Resolutions 



652 PURITAN ENGLAND 

with a message of dissolution from the king. But the bulk of 
the members sternly voted the resolutions, declaring traitors 
to England (1) any one who should bring in innovations in re- 
ligion without the consent of Parliament, (2) any minister who 
should advise the illegal levy of taxes, (3) any officer who should 
aid in their collection, and (4) every citizen who should volun- 
tarily pay them. 

And in the moment's hush, when the great deed was done, 
Eliot's voice was heard once more, and for the last time, in that 
hall: "For, my self, I further protest, as I am a gentleman, if 
my fortune be ever again to meet in this honorable assembly, 
where I now leave off, I will begin again." Then the doors 
swung open, and the angry crowd surged out. Eliot passed 
to the Tower, to die there a prisoner four years later. But 
his friends remembered his words ; and when another Parlia- 
ment did meet, where he had left off, they began again. 

Eliot could have had his liberty if he had bent to acknowl- 
edge himself wrong. His wife died ; friends fell away ; con- 
sumption attacked him, and his enemies knew that he must 
yield or die. His son petitioned for his release, on the ground 
that doctors had certified that without it he could not live. 
The king refused : " Though Sir John be brought low in body, 
yet is he as high and lofty in mind as ever." A month later, 
Eliot was dead. His son presented another petition, that he 
might have his father's body for burial. This request too was 
refused, and there was inscribed on the paper, — a mean act of 
a mean king, — " Let Sir John's body be buried in the church 
of that parish where he died." So Eliot's body rests in the 
Tower in some unmarked and unknown spot — which matters 
little, since free government in England and America is his 
monument. 

On the dissolution of the third Parliament of Charles, Eng- 
land entered a gloomy period. The king issued royal edicts 
in place of laws, and no Parliament met for eleven years (1629- 
1640). During this period, in many ways, the government 
sought the welfare of the nation, and it gave particular attention 



JOHN HAMPDEN 



653 



" ship- 
money ' 
tax 



to the needs of the poor: but its methods were thoroughly 
despotic. To avoid the necessity of calling Parliaments, Charles 
began to practice rigid economy. He sought, too, ingeniously 
to find new ways to get money, and, among other devices, his 
lawyers invented "ship-money." In time of invasion, seaboard 
counties had now and then been called upon by the kings to 
furnish ships for the national navy. Charles stretched this 
custom into a precedent for collecting a "ship-money tax" from 
all England in time of peace. 

John Hampden (p. 650) refused to pay the twenty shillings John 
assessed upon his lands, and the famous ship-money case went to ^^d the 
the courts (1637). James, in his time, had turned the courts 
into servile tools by dismissing the only judge (Sir Edward 
Coke) who dared oppose his will. And now the slavish judges 
decided for the king — as had been expected. The king's 
friends were jubilant, seeing in the new tax "an everlasting 
supply on all occasions"; but Hampden had won the moral 
victory he sought. The twelve-day argument of the lawyers 
attracted wide attention, and the court in its decision was com- 
pelled to state the theory of despotism in its naked hideousness. 
It declared that there was no power to check the Icing's authority 
over his subjects, — their persons or their money, — "For," 
said the Chief Justice, "no act of Parliament makes any differ- 
ence." If England submitted, she would deserve slavery. 

The chief servants of the crown during this period were 
Archbishop Laud and Thomas Wentworth. Wentworth had 
been one of the leaders in securing the Petition of Right, but 
soon afterward he passed over to the side of the king and be- 
came Earl of Strafford. His old associates looked upon him as a 
traitor to the cause of liberty. \ 

Laud was an extreme High Churchman and a conscientious 
bigot. He reformed the discipline of the church and ennobled 
the ritual ; but he persecuted the Puritan clergy cruelly, with 
imprisonment and even by the cutting off of ears. (As a 
result of this and of the political discouragement, that sect 
founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Practically all the 



Laud and 
Wentworth 



654 



PURITAN ENGLAND 



immigration this colony received, before the American Revolu- 
tion, came in the ten years 1630-1640, while Charles ruled 
without Parliament.) 

In 1638 Laud tried to force Episcopacy on Presbyterian 
Scotland.^ But when the clergyman of the great church at 
Edinburgh appeared first in surplice, prayerbook in hand, 
Jenny Geddes, a servant girl, hurled her stool - at his head, 
crying, — " Out, priest ! Dost say mass at my lug [ear] ! " 
The service broke up in wild disorder, and there followed a 
strange scene in the churchyard where stern, grizzled men 
drew blood from their arms, wherewith to sign their names to a 
"Solemn Oath and Covenant" to defend their own form of 
religion with their lives. This Covenant spread swiftly over 
all Lowland Scotland, and the grim Covenanters rose in arms 
and crossed the border. 

Charles' system of absolutism fell like a house of cards. He 
could get no help from England without a Parliament ; and 
(November, 1640) he called the Long Parliament. The great 
leaders of that famous assembly were the commoners Pym, 
Hampden, Sir Harry Vane,^ and, somewhat later, Cromwell. 
Pym took the place of Eliot, and promptly indicated that the 
Commons were the real rulers of England. When the Lords 
tried to delay reform, he brought them to time by his veiled 
threat : he " should be sorry if the House of Commons had to 
save England alone." 

The Scots remained encamped in England ; so the king had 
to assent to Parliament's bills. Parliament first made itself 
safe by a law that it could he dissolved only by its own vote. Then 
it began where Eliot had left off, and sternly put into action 
the principles of his last resolutions. Laud, who had "brought 
in innovations in religion," and Wentworth, who had advised 

1 Scotland had been joined to England when her King James had become 
king of England, but each country had its own parliament, laws, and church. 
The union was "personal," and consisted in the fact that the two countries 
had the same king. This remained the theory until 1707 (p. 668). 

^ Churches had no pews. People stood, or carried their own stools. 

3 Vane had lived in Massachusetts and had been governor there. 



JOHN PYM AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT 655 



and helped carry out the king's poHey, were condemned to 
death as traitors. The lawyers who had advised ship-money, 
and the judges who had declared it legal, were cast into prison 
or driven into banishment. And forty committees were ap- 
pointed, one for each county, to secure the punishment of the 
lesser officers concerned in the illegal acts of the government. 
Then Parliament abolished the Court of the Star Chamber 
and the High Commission, — two rather new courts which 
worked without juries and which, therefore, Charles had been 
able to use as instruments of tyranny. Meanwhile, the many 
martyrs whom Laud had imprisoned were freed from their 
dungeons, and welcomed to London by a joyous multitude 
that strewed flowers beneath the feet of their horses. These 
measures filled the first year, and so far the Commons had 
been united — in punishing and redressing past grievances. 

But now a split began. Moderate men, led by the broad- 
minded Hyde and the chivalrous Falkland, thought enough 
had been done. Parliament had taught the king a stern lesson : 
to do more would mean danger of revolution and anarchy, for 
which these men had no wish. So they drew nearer to the king. 
On the other hand, more far-sighted leaders, like Pym and 
Hampden, saw the necessity of securing safeguards for the future, 
since to them it was plain that the king's promises were worth- 
less. Moreover, a small Presbyterian and Independent party 
("Root and Branch" men), under Vane and Cromwell, wanted 
to overthrow Episcopacy. 

Pym brought matters to a head by introducing a Grand 
Remonstrance, — a series of resolutions which appealed to the 
country for support in further measures against the king and 
the High-church party. In particular it proposed (1) that a 
synod of clergy should meet to reform the church ; and (2) that 
the king's choice of ministers (his chancellor, and so on) should 
be subject to the approval of Parliament. After an all-day and 
almost all-night debate, marked by bitter speech and even by 
the drawing of swords, the Commons adopted the Remonstrance 
by the narrow viajority of eleven votes, amid a scene of wild con- 



Parliament 
hesitates 



Pym's 
" Remon- 
strance " 



656 



PURITAN ENGLAND 



fusion (November 22, 1641). Said Cromwell, as the House 
broke up, " If it had failed, I should have sold all I possess to- 
morrow, and never seen England more." 

Charles tried to reverse this small majority against him by 
destroying Pym, Hampden, and three other leaders, on a charge 
of treasonable correspondence with the invading Scots. No 
doubt they had been technically guilty of treason. But such 
"treason" against Charles was the noblest loyalty to England. 
The Commons paid no attention to the king's charges ; and so 
Charles entered the House in person, followed to the door by a 
body of armed cavaliers, to seize "the five members.'^ 

News of his coming had preceded him ; and, at the order of 
the House, the five had withdrawn. Charles did not know this, 
and ordered the Speaker to point them out. The Speaker pro- 
tested that he had "no eyes to see, nor tongue to speak," but 
as the House should direct him. " Well, well ! " said the king ; 
"my eyes are as good as another's"; and standing in the 
Speaker's place he looked over the room. "I see the birds 
are flown," he added, in a different tone, — and walked out 
baffled, followed by angry shouts of "Privilege ! Privilege !" ^ 

Charles' despotic attempt, and weak failure, consolidated the 
opposition. London rose in arms, and sent trainbands to guard 
Parliament. And Parliament now demanded that the king give 
it control of the militia and of the education of the royal -princes. 
Charles withdrew to the conservative North, and unfurled the 
standard of civil war (1642). 



For Further Reading. — Green's English People (or his Short 
History) is thrillingly interesting for this and the following periods. 

1 Referring to the privilege of members of Parliament to be free from 
arrest, except on the order of the House itself (p. 573). 



CHAPTER LXIV 

THE GREAT REBELLION AND THE COMMONTVEALTH 

Many men who had gone with ParUament in its reforms, now The 

chose the king's side rather than rebelHon and the danger of 3 f^l 
. . . . 1642-164S 

anarchy. The majority of the gentry sided with the king, 
while in general the trading and manufacturing classes and 
the yeomanry fought for Parliament. At the same time, 
the struggle was a true "civil war," dividing families and old 
friends. The king's party took the name "Cavaliers" from the 
court nobles ; while the parliamentarians were called " Round 
Heads," in derision, from the cropped hair of the London 
'prentice lads.^ 

And at first Charles was successful. The shopboys of the Cromwell's 
city trainbands could not stand before the chivalry of the 
"Cavaliers." But Oliver Cromwell, a colonel in the parlia- 
mentary army, had raised a troop known as- Ironsides. He saw 
that the only force Parliament could oppose to the habitual 
bravery of the English gentleman was the religious enthusiasm 
of the extreme Puritans. Accordingly, he drew his' recruits 
from the Independents of the east of England, — mostly yeo- 
men farmers. They were men of godly lives, free from the 
usual license of a camp. They fell on their knees for prayer 
before battle, and then charged with the old Hebrew battle 
psalms upon their lips. By this troop the great battle of 
Marston Moor was won. Then Cromwell was put in chief 
command. He reorganized the whole army upon this "New 
Model" ; and soon after, the victory of Naseby virtually closed 
the war (1645). 

1 The portraits of Cromwell and Vane (pp. 658, 660) show that Puritan 
gentlemen did not crop their hair. Short hair was a "class" mark. 

657 



658 



ENGLAND : THE GREAT REBELLION 



There is an instructive contrast between the civilized nature 
of this war and the character of the Thirty Years' War in Ger- 
many, which was going on at the same time. In England non- 
combatants were rarely molested, and there was little needless 
destruction of property. And says John Fiske : " If we consider 

merely its territorial area 
or the number of men 
slain, the war of the Eng- 
lish Parliament against 
Charles I seems a trivial 
affair . . . but if we con- 
sider the moral and politi- 
cal issues involved, and 
the influence of the 
struggle on the future 
welfare of mankind, we 
soon come to see that 
there never was a conflict 
of more world-wide signif- 
icance than that from 
which Oliver Cromwell 
came out victorious. ... 
If ever there were men 
who laid down their lives 
in the cause of all man- 
kind, it was those grim old Ironsides, whose watchwords were 
texts from Holy Writ and whose battle cries were hymns of 
praise." 




Cromwell. — After Lely's portrait. 



When the war began, many Episcopalians in Parliament 
withdrew to join the king. This left the Presbyterians almost 
in control. Before long this party was strengthened still further 
by the need of buying the aid of Presbyterian Scotland. Then 
Parliament made the English church Presbyterian, and soon it 
began to compel all men to accept this form of worship. On 
this point, the Presbyterian Parliament and the Independent 



ENGLAND A REPUBLIC, 1649 659 

"New Model" quarreled. Charles, now a prisoner, tried to 
play off one against the other, — intending, with shameless 
duplicity, to keep promises to neither. "Be quite easy," he 
wrote his wife, " as to the concessions I may grant. When the 
time comes, I shall know very well how to treat these rogues; 
and, instead of a silken garter [the badge of an honorary order 
of knighthood] I will fit them with a hempen halter." 

These dissensions and intrigues led to a "Second Civil War.'* 
But now the real government of England was in the army. A 
council of officers, with Cromwell for their head, prepared plans ; 
and the whole army "sought the Lord" regarding them in 
monster prayer-meetings. 

The army quickly stamped out the royalist and Presbyterian 
risings. Then, under order from the council of officers. Colonel 
Pride "purged" the House of Commons by expelling 143 
Presbyterians. After "Pride's Purge" (December, 1648), 
Parliament rarely had an attendance of more than sixty (out of 
an original membership of some five hundred). The "Rump" 
were all Independents, and their leader was Vane. Pym and 
Hampden had died some time before. 

This reimiant of Parliament, backed by the army, abolished The 
monarchy and the House of Lords, and brought "Charles Stuart, ealth°"' 
that man of blood," to trial for treason to England. Charles 1649-1654 
was executed, January 20, 1649, dying with better grace than 
he had lived. Then the "Rump" Parliament abolished Pres- 
byterianism as a state church, and declared England a republic, 
under the name of the Commonwealth. " The people," said a 
famous resolution, "are, under God, the original of all just power; 
and the Commons of England in parliament assembled, being 
chosen by the people, have the supreme power in this nation." 

The Scots were not ready for such radical measures, and Battle of 
they were angry at the overthrow of Presbyterianism. So "'^orcester 
they crowned the son of the dead king as Charles II, and in- 
vaded England to place him on the throne. Cromwell crushed 
them at Worcester, and the young "King of Scots" escaped to 
the continent. 



660 



ENGLAND : THE COMMONWEALTH 



The Rump continued to rule for four years more. But it 
was only a shadow of the Parliament elected thirteen years 
before. Cromwell and the army grew anxious to see the govern- 
ment put on a permanent basis, and they felt that this could 
be done only by a real Parliament. The Rump was unwilling 
to dissolve ; but at last, under Cromwell's insistence, it agre<>d 
to do so. 

But Cromwell learned that it was hurrying through a bill which 
would make its members a part of the new Parliament without 

reelection, and which, in- 
deed, would give them 
power to reject elected 
members if they chose. 
Cromwell felt that he was 
being tricked. Hurrying 
to the House with a file of 
musketeers, he dispersed it 
(1653) with an unusual 
burst of passion. " Come," 
he said, " I will put an end 
to your prating. You are 
no Parliament ! I say, you 
are no Parliament ! " His 
old friend. Vane, reproached 
his violence loudly. Crom- 
well turned with savage 
contempt: "Harry Vane! 
Sir Harry Vane ! The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " 
And after his officers had led the Speaker from the chair, 
Cromwell added to the remaining members, — " It's you that 
have forced me to this. I have sought the Lord, night and 
day, that he would slay me rather than put me upon the doing 
of this work." 

Cromwell's outburst of temper at the Rump was natural. 
He saw that it was going to be almost impossible for him to 
preserve the form of parliamentary government, when the 




Hahrt Vane. 



RULE OF CROMWELL 661 

only representatives of the nation had failed him — poor repre- 
sentatives though they were. There was no power that could 
even claim the right to call a Parliament. Cromwell and the 
army, however, summoned a national convention, to make a new 
constitution, and he made two other sincere attempts at parlia- 
ments. But all these bodies proved dilatory and factious ; and 
Cromwell grew more and more hasty and arbitrary. 

Finally he and the army officers impatiently took the construe- The Pro- 
tion of new machinery of government into their own hands, g'i^!^^' 
Cromwell assumed the title of Lord Protector (1654) ; and the 
following six years are the period of the Protectorate. 

The real difficulty was that the Independents were only a small 
fraction qf the riation. They had won mastery by war, and 
they kept it through the discipline of the army. Cromwell 
became practically a dictator, with greater power than Charles 
had ever had. His rule was stained by cruelties in Ireland ; 
but in other respects it was wise and firm. He made England 
once more a Great Power, peaceful at home and respected 
abroad ; and he gave freedom of worship to all Protestant sects, 
— a more liberal policy in religion than could be found any- 
where else in that age except in Holland and in Roger Williams' 
little colony just founded in Rhode Island. 

At the best, however, Cromwell's rule was the rule of force, not 
of law. The noble experiment of a Republic had failed miser- 
ably in the hands of its friends ; and, on Cromwell's death, the 
nation, with wild rejoicings, welcomed back Charles II in "the 
Restoration" of 1660. 

For Further Reading. — Green's histories as before (cf. p. 656 
above). Carlyle's Cromwell (in his Heroes and Hero-worship) may well 
be read. George MacDonald's St. George and St. Michael and Scott's 
Woodstock are excellent fiction for the Civil War, and they present some- 
what different views. 

Exercise. — The dates in English seventeenth-century history 
are important for an understanding of early American history : espe- 
cially, 1603 (accession of James I) ; 162^1640 (No-parhament period) ; 
1648-1660 (Commonwealth) ; 1660 (Restoration) ; 1688 (Revolution). 



CHAPTER LXV 



THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION 



With the Restoration, the great age of Puritanism closed. 
The court, and the young cavaHers all over the land, gave 
themselves up to shameful licentiousness. Of course, among 
the country gentry and the middle class of the towns, there 
continued to be large numbers of religious, God-fearing homes ; 
and in places even the somber morality of the Puritans sur- 
vived. But fashionable society followed largely the example 
of the court circle. 

Court literature, too, was indescribably corrupt and indecent. 
But, in just this age of defeat, Puritanism found its highest 
expression in literature. John Milton, years before, had given 
noble poems to the world — like his U Allegro — but for long 
now he had abandoned poetry to work in Cromwell's Council 
and to champion the Puritan cause in prose pamphlets. Now, a 
blind, disappointed old man, he composed Paradise Lost. And 
John Bunyan, a dissenting minister, lying in jail under the 
persecuting laws of the new government, wrote Pilgrim's 
Progress. 

The established church became again Episcopalian, as it 
has since remained ; and in the reaction against Puritanism, 
the new Parliament passed many cruel acts of persecution. Two 
thousand Puritan preachers were not only driven from their 
pulpits, but were forbidden to earn a living by teaching, or 
even to come within five miles of any city or borough in England. 
All dissenters — Catholic and Protestant — were excluded from 
the right to hold municipal office. And all religious worship 
except the Episcopalian was punished with severe penalties. 

662 



ENGLAND : THE RESTORATION 663 

In spite of all this, the great political principles for which the Political 
early Puritan Parliaments of Charles I had contended were Les^\ed 
victorious. Even their old enemies adopted them. The 
Parliament that was elected in the fervor of welcome to the 
restored monarch was wildly enthusiastic for king and for 
church. Charles knew he could never get another so much to 
his mind ; and so he shrewdly kept this " Cavalier Parliament" 
through most of his reign — till 1679. But even the Cavalier 
Parliament insisted strenuously, and successfully, on Parlia- 
ment's sole right to impose taxes, regulate the church, and control 
foreign policy. And Charles' second Parliament adopted the 
great Habeas Corpus Act, which still secures Englishmen 
against arbitrary imprisonment — such as had been so com- 
mon under Charles' father. The principle of this act was older 
than Magna Carta ; but the law of Charles' time first provided 
adequate machinery, much as we have it in our States to-day, 
to enforce the principle. 

Charles II was careless, indolent, selfish, extravagant, witty. Charles II, 
He is known as the "Merry Monarch." One of his courtiers ^660-1685 
described him in jesting rhyme as a king "who never said a 
foolish thing, and never did a wise one." But though lazy, 
Charles had real ability. He said lightly that he "had no 
mind to go on his travels again," and at any cost he avoided 
a clash with Parliament. However, in return for secret grants 
of money from Louis XIV of France, he shamefully made Eng- 
land a mere satellite of that country in foreign affairs ; and at 
home he cautiously built up a standing army. There is reason to 
think that beneath his merry exterior Charles was nursing plans 
for tyranny far more dangerous than his father's ; but he died 
suddenly (1685) before he was ready to act. 

Real political parties first appeared toward the close of this Beginning of 
reign. Charles had no legitimate son ; and his brother and ^° * . ^^ 
heir, James, was a Catholic of narrow, despotic temper. The 
more radical members of Parliament introduced a bill to exclude 
him from the throne ; and their supporters throughout England 
sent up monster petitions to have the bill made law. The 



664 ENGLAND, 1660-1688 

Catholics and the more conservative part of Parliament, espe- 
cially those who believed that Parliament had no right to change 
the succession, sent up counter-petitions expressing horror at 
the proposal. These "Abhorrers" called the other petitioners 
Whigs (Whey-eaters), a name sometimes given to the extreme 
Scotch Calvinists with their sour faces. The Whigs called their 
opponents Tories (bog-trotters), a name for the ragged Irish 
rebels who had supported the Catholic and royal policy in the 
Civil War. 

The bill failed ; but the rough division into parties remained. 
It was a long time before there was any regular organization, 
or precise platform ; but, in general, the Whigs helievcd in the 
supremacy of Parliament, and sought on every occasion to limit 
the royal authority ; while the Tories sustained the royal author- 
ity and wished to prevent any further extension of the poivers of 
the people. 

James II lacked his brother's tact. He arbitrarily "sus- 
pended" the laws against Catholics, tried to intimidate the 
law courts, and rapidly increased the standing army. It was 
believed that he meant to make the established church Catholic ; 
and this belief prepared England for revolution. The Whig 
leaders called for aid to William of Orange, the Stadtholder of 
Holland, who had married James' daughter Mary. William 
landed with a few troops. James found himself utterly deserted, 
even by his army, and fled to France. 

The story of this Revolution of 1688 i:i not a noble one. Self- 
ishness and deceit mark every step. William of Orange is 
the only fine character on either side. There is no longer a 
patriot Eliot or Pym or Hampden, or a royalist Hyde or Falk- 
land. As Macaulay says, it was " an age of great measures and 
little men "; and the term " glorious," which English historians 
have applied to the Revolution, must be taken to belong 
to results rather than to methods. 

Those results were of mighty import. A Convention-Parlia- 
ment declared the throne vacant, drew up the great Declaration 



THE BILL OP RIGHTS 665 

of Rights, the "third great document in the Bible of EngUsh The 
Liberties," and elected William and Mary joint sovereigns Rjgjj°g 
on condition of their assenting to the Declaration. The suprem- 
acy of Parliament over the king was once more firmly established. 
The new sovereigns, like the old Lancastrians, had only a parlia- 
mentary title to the throne. 

The next regular Parliament enacted this Declaration of 
Rights into a "Bill of Rights." The Bill of Rights stated 
once more the fundamental liberties of Englishmen, as Magna 
Carta and the Petition of Right had done, and fixed the order 
of succession (1) in the children of William and Mary, if any; 
(2) in Mary's sister Anne. 

The most important results of the Revolution appeared in William ni, 
the next century. William III was a great-grandson of William 
the Silent. He ranks among England's greatest kings, but 
he was unpopular as a foreigner. (He spoke only his native 
Dutch, not English.) His reign (1688-1702) was spent mainly 
in war against the overshadowing might of Louis XIV of France. 
While only Stadtholder of Holland, William had already become 
the most formidable opponent of Louis XIV's schemes (p. 678) ; 
and now the French king undertook to restore James II. 

This began a series of wars between France and EnglaUjd — 
the "Second Hundred Years' War." With slight intervals of 
peace, the struggle lasted from 1689 to 1815. The story will 
be told in future chapters. Here it is enough to note that the 
long conflict turned the government's attention away from 
progress at home. Just in the jfirst years, however, some 
remarkable reforms were made by Parliament, both in politics 
and in religion. These were properly part of the Revolution. 

The religious reform was embodied in the Act of Toleration of Act of 
1689. The Revolution of 1688 was essentially the work of the Toleration 
English church. But the persecuted Protestant dissenters had 
rallied to its aid — against the Catholic James ; and William 
insisted that Parliament should now grant them freedom of 
worship. This was done — a great step forward. The law, 



666 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688 

however, did not apply to Catholics, Jews, or Unitarians. 
These three classes remained excluded not only from all right 
to worship in their own way — under severe penalties — but 
also from the right to hold office or attend the universities. 
Indeed the Protestant dissenters were not allowed to do either 
of these last things. 

The chief gains in political liberty, connected with the Revo- 
lution, come under four heads : 

1. The Stuart kings had frequently interfered shamelessly 
with the independence of the courts. Now the judges were 
made removable only by Parliament, not by the king. 

2. A triennial bill ordered that a new Parliament should be 
elected at least once in three years. This put an end to such 
abuse as the long life of the Cavalier Parliament. In 1716 the 
term was changed to seven years, and in 1911, to five. 

3. Parliament hit upon a simple device which, indirectly, 
has put an end completely to the old way in which kings abused 
their power of dissolving Parliaments. After the Revolution, 
Parliaments determined to pass "revenue bills" (furnishing money 
for government expenses) only for a year at a time — instead 
of for the life of the sovereign, as had been customary — and 
not to pass such bills at all until other business had been attended to. 
In like fashion, the Mutiny Act, which gives officers authority 
over soldiers, was passed henceforth only for short periods. 
That is, Parliament adopted the regular policy of delegating 
power of purse and sioord for only one year at a time. Thence- 
forward, Parliaments have been assembled each year, and they 
have practically fixed their own adjournments. 

4. The greatest problem of parliamentary government (as 
Sir John Eliot had seen) was to control the "king's ministers" 
and make them really the ministers of Parliament. Parliament 
could remove and punish the king's advisers ; but such action 
could be secured only by a serious struggle, and against notorious 
offenders. Some way was wanted to secure ministers acceptable 
to Parliament easily and at all times. 

This desired "Cabinet Government" was secured indirectly 



RISE OF CABINET GOVERNMEKT 667 

through the next century and a half; but the first important Beginning of 

steps were taken in the reign of Wilham. At first Wihiani '^^^^^^^ 

. , . , , . government 

tried to unite the kingdom, and balance Whigs and Tories, by 

keeping the leaders of both parties among his ministers. But 

he was much annoyed by the jealousy and suspicion which 

Parliament felt toward his measures. Sometimes, too, there 

were dangerous deadlocks between king and Parliament at 

critical times. 

Then a shrewd political schemer suggested to the king that 
he should choose all his advisers and assistants from the Whigs, 
who had a majority in the House of Commons. Such ministers 
would have the confidence of the Commons; and that body 
would support their proposals, instead of blocking all measures. 
William accepted this suggestion ; and a little later, when the 
Tories for a time secured a majority, he carried out the prin- 
ciple by replacing his "cabinet" with leading Tories. This 
was the beginning of ministerial government. 

William, however, was a powerful ruler. He was not a 
tyrant in any way ; but he believed in a king's authority, and 
he succeeded for the most part in keeping the ministers the " king's 
ministers'' — to carry out his policy. Queen Anne (1702-1714) 
tried to maintain a similar control over her ministry. But, 
like William and Mary, she too died without leaving children ; 
and the crown passed by a new Act of Settlement to a great- 
grandson of James I, the German George I, who was already 
Elector of Hanover. (This law excluded nearer heii^s because 
they were Catholics ; and it makes the title of every English 
sovereign since Anne.) 

Neither George I nor his son George II spoke English ; and Growth of 
so far as they cared for matters of government at all, they 
were interested in their German principality rather than in Eng- 
land. During their half-century (1714-1760), the government ^^°^^^^ 
of England was left to the group of ministers, or the cabinet. 
For nearly half the period (or from 1721 to 1742) the leading 
man in the cabinet was the Whig Sir Robert Walpolc. Walpole 
selected the other ministers, and put before Parliament his own 



668 



ENGLAND UNDER THE GEORGES 



plans under the king's name. He is properl}^ called "the first 
Prime Minister." Thus the reigns of these two stupid German 
Georges gave a great impetus to true cabinet government. The 
"king's ministers'' toere fairly on the way to become the "ministers 
of Parliament." 

Unhappily, Parliament itself did not yet really represent the 
nation. Walpole sought earnestly, and on the whole wisely, 
to advance the material prosperity of England, and especially 
to build up her trade. Accordingly he clung tenaciously to a 
policy of peace. But he ruled largely by unhlushing corruption. 
Said he cynically, "Every man has his price." Certainly he 
found it possible to buy many members of Parliament with gift 
of lucrative offices — oftentimes offices with no duties attached 
to them. During his rule, it was not a parliamentary majority 
that made the ministry, but the ministry that made the parliamentary 
majority. The same method, used only a little less shamelessly, 
was the means by which the ministers of George III in the next 
generation managed Parliament and brought it to drive the 
American colonies into war. 

Meantime England had become Great Biitain. In 1707 the 
" personal union" between Scotland and England was made 
a true consolidation by the " Act of Union," adopted by the 
parliaments of both countries. Scotland gave up her separate 
legislature, and became part of the " United Kingdom," with 
the right to send members to the Parliament at Westminster and 
to keep her own established Presbyterian church. Cromwell, 
too, had completed the conquest of Ireland. And the same 
seventeenth century had seen also another and vaster expansion 
— to which we now turn. 



For Further Reading. — It is desirable for reading students to 
continue Green at least through the Revolution of 1688. Blackmore's 
Lorna Doone is a splendid story of the period. 



CHAPTER LXVI 

EXPANSION INTO NEW WORLDS 

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — the age of the 
EngHsh Renaissance, of the Protestant Revolt, of the beginnings 
of scientific experiment, of the Puritan movement, and of the 
growth of pohtical Hberty in England — saw also the expan- 
sion of Europe into New Worlds east and west. Columbus 
and Da Gama (pp. 602-603) had doubled the size of the known 
earth, added a new stir to European thought, and revolu- 
tionized the distribution of wealth in Europe. The center of The center 

historical interest shifted westward once more. The Mediter- ?^ historical 

interest 
ranean, for two thousand years the one great highway between shifts 

Europe and the Orient, gave way to the. Atlantic and the westward 
"passage round the Cape." And with the decay of Mediter- 
ranean trade, the cities of Italy lost their leadership both in 
commerce and in art, while vast gain fell to the seaboard coun- 
tries on the Atlantic. 

For a hundred years, it is true, the direct material gains were 
confined to the two countries which had begun the explorations. 
Portugal built up a great and rich empire in the Indian Ocean 
and in the Pacific, and an accident gave her Brazil. Otherwise, 
the sixteenth century in America belongs to Spain. 

The story of Spain's conquests is a tale of heroic endurance, Spain in 
marred by ferocious cruelty, — "all horrid transactions," as America 
an old Spanish chronicler said. Not till twenty years after 
the discovery did the Spaniards advance to the mainland of 
America for settlement ; but, once begun, her handful of ad- 
venturers swooped north and south. By 1550, she held all 
South America (save Portugal's Brazil), all Central America, 
Mexico, the Californias far up the Pacific coast, and the Floridas. 

669 



670 



SPAIN IN AMERICA 



The gold from Mexico and Peru helped to give Spain her proud 
place as the mightiest country in Europe, and she guarded 
these American possessions jealously. The Gulf of Mexico 
and the Caribbean Sea were Spanish lakes, and the whole 
Pacific was a "closed sea." Frenchman or Englishman, caught 
upon those waters, found his grave beneath them. 

Nor was Spain content with this huge empire on land and 
sea. She was planning grandly to occupy the Mississippi 
valley and the Appalachian slope in America, and to seize 
Holland and England in Europe ; but in 1588 she received her 
fatal check, at the hands of the English sea dogs, in the ruin 
of her Invincible Armada (p. 625). 

That victory was a turning point in vjorld history. Spain 
never regained her old supremacy on the sea ; and so the other 
seaboard countries of Western Europe were free to try their 
fortunes in America. But Holland, in her half-century of 
rebellion against Spain, turned her chief energies to seizing 
Portugal's old empire in the Orient, which had now become 
Spain's (p. 627). .The Swedish colonies on the Delaware were 
never formidable to the claims of other nations, after the death 
of Gustavus Adolphus (p. 634). And so North America was 
left to France and England. 

For a time, France seemed most likely to succeed Spain as 
mistress in North America. A quarter of a century, it is true, 
went to exploration and failure ; but in 1608 Champlain founded 
the first permanent French colony at Quebec. Soon canoe- 
fleets of traders and missionaries were coasting the shores of 
the Great Lakes and establishing stations at various points 
still known by French names. Finally, in 1682, after years of 
gallant effort. La Salle followed the Mississippi to the Gulf, 
setting up a French claim to the entire valley. 

From that time New France consisted of a colony on the 
St. Lawrence, in the far north, and the semi-tropical colony of 
New Orleans, joined to each other by a thin chain of trading 
posts and military stations along the connecting waterways. 

It is easy to point out certain French advantages in the race 



FRANCE IN AMERICA 



671 



French 
advantages 



with England for North America. At home French statesmen 
worked steadily to build a French empire in the New World, 
while the English government for the most part ignored English 
colonies. The thought of such empire for their country, too, 
inspired French explorers in the wilderness — splendid patriots 
like Champlain, Ribault, and La Salle. France also sent forth 
the most zealous and heroic of missionaries to convert the 
savages. These two mighty motives, patriotism and mission- 
ary zeal, played a greater part in founding New France than 
in establishing either 
Spanish or English 
colonies. Moreover, 
the French could deal 
with the natives better 
than the stiffer, less 
sympathetic English 
could ; and the French 
leaders Were men of 
far-reaching views. 

But though the 
French colonies were 
strong in the leaders, 
they were weak in 
some vital matters 
that depended on the mass of the colonists. They lacked 
homes, individual enterprise, and political life. 

1. New France was not a country of agriculture. Except Lack of 
for a few leaders and missionaries, the settlers were either un- °™®^ 
progressive peasants or reckless adventurers. For the most 

part they did not bring families, and, if they married, they 
took Indian wives. Agriculture was the only basis for a perma- 
nent colony; but these colonists turned instead to trapping 
and the fur trade, and adopted Indian habits. 

2. The French government sought, in vain, to remedy this by 
sending over cargoes of "king's girls," and by offering bonuses 
for early marriages and large families. The easiest remedy 




La Salle Taking Possession of the Missis- 
sippi Valley for France, at the mouth of 
the river. From a painting by Marchand, 
at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. 



672 



FRANCE FAILS IN AMERICA 



would have been to let the Huguenots come. They were skill- 
ful artisans and agriculturists, and, while they held towns for 
themselves (p. 632), they had shown some fitness for self-govern- 
ment. But Louis XIV of France, while he lavished money in 
sending undesirable immigrants, refused to let heretics found 
a new state. In large part, it was religious bigotry which lost 
France her chance. 

3. Paternalism smothered private enterprise in industry. 
New France was taught to depend, not on herself, but on the 
aid and direction of a government three thousand miles away. 
Trade was shackled by silly restrictions, and hampered by silly 
encouragements. The rulers did everything. " Send us money 
to build storehouses" ran the begging letters of the colonial 
governors to the French king. "Send us a teacher to make 
sailors. We want a surgeon." And so, at various times, re- 
quests for brickmakers, iron- workers, pilots. New France got 
the help she asked ; but she did not learn to walk alone. 

4. Political life, too, was lacking. France herself had become 
a centralized despotism ; and, in New France, as a French 
writer (Tocqueville) says, " this deformity was seen as though 
magnified by a microscope." No public meetings could be held 
without special license from the governor ; and, if licensed, they 
could do nothing worth while. The governor's ordinances 
(not the people) regulated pew rent, the order in which digni- 
taries should sit in church, the number of cattle a man might 
keep, the pay of chimney sweeps, the charges in inns, and so 
on. "It is of greatest importance," wrote one official, "that 
the people should not be at liberty to speak their minds." 

Worse than that — the people had no minds to speak. In 
1672, Frontenac, the greatest governor of New France, tried 
to introduce the elements of self-government. He provided 
•a system of "estates" to advise with him, — a gathering of 
clergy, nobles, and commons (citizens and merchants) ; and 
he ordered that Quebec should have a sort of town meeting 
twice a year to elect aldermen and to discuss public business. 
The home government sternly disapproved these mild innova- 



ENGLAND WINS AMERICA 



673 



tions, reminding Frontenac that at home the kings had done 
away with the old States General (p. 524), and directing him 
to remember that it was "proper that each* should speak for 
himself, and no one for the whole." The plan fell to pieces; 
the people cared so little for it that they made no effort to save it. 

Very different was the fringe of English colonies that grew England's 

up on the Atlantic coast, ne^'er with a king's subsidies, often "^^J^'y with 

' Spam in 

America 




(jUEEN Elizabeth Knighting Dhake on board the Golden Hind, on his 
return from raiding Spanish America in his voyage round the globe 
(1581). From a contemporary drawing by Sir John Gilbert. 

out of a king's persecution, and asking no favor but to be let 
alone. 

During the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when Eliza- 
beth's reign was'half gone, England entered openly on a daring 
rivalry with the overshadowing might of Spain. Out of that 
rivalry English America was born — by the work not of 
sovereigns, but of individual adventurous patriots. Reckless 
and picturesque freebooters, like Drake and Hawkins, sought 



674 



ENGLAND WINS AMERICA 



profit and honor for themselves, and injury to the foe, by raiding 
the wide-flung realms of New Spain. More farsighted men, 
like Raleigh, saw 'that English colonies in America would be 
"a great bridle to the Indies of the Kinge of Spaine,". and 
began attempts so to "put a byt in the anchent enemy's 
mouth." 

Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Raleigh, in Elizabeth's reign, 
made the first attempts. These came to nothing, because 
just then the energies of the nation were drained by the ex- 
hausting struggle with the might of Spain in Europe. Then 
James became king, and sought Spanish friendship ; and 
Englishmen began to fear lest their chance for empire was 
slipping through their fingers. Men said that a terrible mis- 
take had been made when Henry VII refused to adopt the 
enterprise of Columbus, and all the more they insisted that 
England should not now abandon Virginia, — " this one enter- 
prise left unto these days." 

Moreover, population had doubled in the long internal peace 
since the Wars of the Roses, rising to some four million people. 
This was still only a tenth as many people as the island sup- 
ports to-day ; but, under the industrial system of that time, 
England needed an outlet for this " crowded" population (p. 641). 
The more enterprising of the hard-pressed yeomanry were glad 
to seek new homes ; and this class furnished most of the manual 
labor in the early colonies. 

But captains and capitalists, too, were needed ; and a new 
condition in England just after the death of Elizabeth turned 
some of the best of the middle class toward American adven- 
ture. Until James made peace with Spain (1604), the high- 
spirited youth, and especially the younger sons of gentry 
families, fought in the Low Countries for Dutch independence 
(p. 629) or made the "gentlemen-adventurers" who under com- 
manders like Drake paralyzed the vast domain of New Spain 
with fear. Now these men sought occupation and fortune in 
colonizing America, still attacking the old enemy, and in his 
weakest point. These young adventurers were not used to 




English settlement, iseo 

Dutch settlement, ^eeo 

Swedish settlement, 1660 

Limit of English occupation 
in 1690 



COLONIAL AMERICA 675 

steady industry, and they were restless under discipline. But 
when they had learned somewhat of the needs of frontier life, 
their pluck and endurance made them splendid colonists. 

Such were the forces in English life that established Virginia, 
early in the reign of James I. Toward the close of that same 
reign, Puritanism was added to the colonizing forces, and, before Puritanism 
the Long Parliament met, there was a second patch of English 
colonies on the North Atlantic shore. After this, the leading 
motive for colonization was a desire to better one's worldly 
state — to win a better home or more wealth than the Old 
World offered — though, late in the century, religious perse- 
cution in England played its part again in founding the great 
liberal colony of Pennsylvania. And so, from one cause and England's 
another, at the time of the "Revolution of 1688," the English success 
settlements in America had expanded into a broad band of twelve 
great colonics, reaching from the Penobscot to the Savannah, with 
a total population of a quarter of a million. 

These colonies all enjoyed the English Common Law, with Transfer of 
its guarantees for jury trial, freedom of speech, and other ^"^sUsh 
personal liberties (such as were known in no other people's America 
colonies for two hundred years) ; and almost as soon as founded, 
they developed also a large degree of political liberty. They 
all possessed their own self-governing representative assemblies, 
modeled on the English Parliament. 

Moreover, not all England, but only the more democratic Democratic 

part of English life, was transferred to America. No hereditary *®^dencies 
. . mtensified 

nobles or monarch or bishop ever made part of colonial America. 

And that part of English society which did come was drawn 
toward still greater democracy by the presence here of un- 
limited free land. When the Puritan gentlemen, who at first 
made up the governing body in Massachusetts colony, tried to 
fix wages for carpenters by law, as the gentry did in England 
(p. 641), the New England carpenters simply ceased to do car- 
penter work and became farmers. Thus wages rose, spite of 
aristocratic efforts to hold them down. Free land helped to 
maintain equality in industry, and so in politics ; and the Eng- 



676 



COLONIAL AMERICA 



lish colonies from the first began to diverge from the eld home 
in the direction of even greater freedom. 

At the same time, the colonists were essentially English. Their 
free institutio7is were all English in origin; and they themselves 
were Englishmen on a distant frontier. Free land did not 
make New France democratic and self-governing. Frenchmen 
and Englishmen in the New World developed along lines of despot- 
ism or freedom upon which their old homes had started them. 



In the next chapter we shall see how the story of American 
colonization merged with the story of European wars. The 
conflict in Europe (p. 665) between William III of England and 
Louis XIV of France became a hundred years' conflict (1690- 
1815) for empire in America and Asia. 

For Further Reading. — The student should study the expan- 
sion of Europe in Woodward's Expansion of the British Empire, I, 1-263 ; 
Seeley's Expansion of England; or Caldecott's English Colonization. 



PART XI 
LOUIS XIV AND PEEDERIOK 11: 1648-1789 



CHAPTER LXVII 

FRENCH LEADERSHIP 

The last part of the Thirty Years' War, we saw, was something The 
besides a religious conflict. Catholic France aided Protestant of po^'i- " 
Germany and Holland to break the power of Catholic Austria 
and Spain. Such attempts to destroy a too powerful neighbor 
are characteristic of the next hundred years of war. The chief 
object of statesmen became to keep any one country from 
growing too strong for its neighbors' safety. This was called 
maintaining the Balance of Power. For many years after 1648 Threatened 
France was the country that threatened that balance, and so league ^ ranee 
after league of other countries was organized against her. 
International morality was low and selfish, however, and com- 
monly the nations were willing to let a strong Power rob a 
weaker neighbor if they could find "compensation" by them- 
selves robbing some other weak state. Moreover, these wars 
were dynastic wars (in the interests of ruling families) more Dynastic 
than any that Europe had ever seen. And the personal likings ^^'^ 
and hatreds of kings interfered sometimes with their devotion 
to the "balance of power." During most of the long period, 
the stage is held by one or another of three great rulers, Louis 
XIV of France (1643-1715), Peter the Great of Russia (1689- 
1725), and Frederick the Great of Prussia (1740-1786). 

In the early years of Louis XIV his great minister, Colbert, Early years^ 
introduced economy into the finances, encouraged new manu- 

677 



678 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV 



factures, built roads, introduced canals, and watched zealously 
over the growth of New France in America. But in 1667 
Louis began a series of wars that filled most of the next forty 
years. During that half-century, despotic France threat- 
ened freedom for the world, as Spain had done a century 
before, and as Hohenzollern Germany has recently been threat- 
ening it. 

In the first twelve years of war, Louis sought to seize territory 
on his northeastern frontier. The Dutch Republic was his 
chief obstacle. Finally, Louis dropped all other plans, in order 
to crush that little state. In 1672, without warning, he seized 
the duchy of Lorraine — much as the Germans seized Luxem- 
burg at the opening of the recent World War — and so won access 
to Holland's frontier, which he crossed with a splendid army of 
100,000 men. The Dutch intrusted their government to Wil- 
liam of Orange (who afterward became William III of England). 
William was hot a supreme genius ; but he was faithful and 
heroic. More than any other man he foiled the ambition of 
France. Friends urged upon him that confiict with the mighty 
power of Louis was hopeless, and that he could only see his 
country lost. "There is a way never to see it lost," he replied 
quietly ; "that way is to die on the last dike." With such grim 
determination, he finally let in the North Sea to drive out the 
French armies. Meantime he toiled ceaselessly in building up 
against France an alliance of European powers, until Louis 
was compelled to accept peace with only slight gains of terri- 
tory from the Spanish Netherlands. 

During ten years of truce that followed, Louis continued 
to seize bits of territory along the Rhine — including the " free 
city" of Strassburg. But the important event of this period 
was his treatment of the Huguenots. In 1685 he revoked the 
Edict of Nantes, and tried to compel the Huguenots to accept 
Catholicism. Dragoons were quartered in the Huguenot dis- 
tricts, and terrible persecutions fell upon those who refused to 
abandon their faith. Protestantism did finally disappear from 
France. But, though Louis tried to prevent any heretic from 



FRANCE WARS FOR WORLD EMPIRE 679 

leaving France alive, tens of thousands (perhaps 300,000 in all) 
escaped to Holland, Prussia, England, and America.^ The 
effect on France corresponded in a measure to the effect of the 
expulsion of the Moriscoes (p. 630) on Spain. The rest of 
Louis' reign was a period of failure. 

The second series of wars began in 1689 (p. 665). As before, 
the French armies were invincible in the field; but, as before, 
William checked Louis by building up a general European 
alliance. England had now taken Holland's place as the 
center of opposition to French despotism. Louis fought mainly 
to get more Rhine territory ; but this time he kept 7io gains. 
This war is known in American history as " King William's 
War." The struggle had widened from a mere European war into 
a Titanic conflict between France and England for ivorld-empire. 

The war-methods of France in this struggle were horrible. 
French armies deliberately depopulated large districts. A strik- 
ing passage of Macaulay tells the fate of one Rhine province : 
"The commander announced to near half a million human 
beings that he granted them three days grace. . . . Soon the 
roads and fields were black with innumerable men, women, 
and children, fleeing from their homes. . . . Flames went 
up from every market place, every parish church, every county 
seat." Many of these fugitives finally came to America. 

Next, Louis eagerly seized a chance to put one of his grand- The 
•3ons on the vacant Spanish throne, as Philip V, exclaiming 
exultantly, "The Pyrenees no longer exist." But Europe 
united against France and Spain in the "War of the Spanish 
Succession," known in American history as "Queen Anne's 
War." In this struggle, for the first time, success in the field 
lay with the Allies. The English Marlborough and the Haps- 

1 In America the Huguenots went mainly to the Carolinas ; but some old 
Virginia families trace their origin to this immigration. In New York John 
Jay and Alexander Hamilton were both of Huguenot descent. And in 
Massachusetts the Huguenot influence is suggested by the names of Paul 
Revere, Peter Faneuil, and Governor Bowdoin. 



680 



THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV 



burg Prince Eugene won terrible victories over the armies of 
France, at Blenheim in Bavaria, and at Ramillies, Oudenarde, 
and Malplaquet in Belgium, the suffering battleground of the 
rival kings. 

The Peace of Utrecht (1713) left Philip king of Spain, but 
he had to renounce for himself and his heirs all claim upon the 
French throne. France gained no territory in Europe, and in 
America she lost Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to England. 
England also acquired command of the Mediterranean, by securing 
from Spain the fortress of Gibraltar and the island of Minorca. 
Spain lost all her European possessions outside her own peninsula, 
ceding her Netherland provinces, the kingdom of Sicily, and Naples, 
and the great Duchy of Milan in North Italy, to Austria. 



Louis XIV dazzled the men of his age, and won the title 
of the Great King {Grand Monarque) ; but his wars exhausted 
France. At the close of his reign, the industry of France 
was declining under a crushing taxation, of which more than half 
went merely to pay the interest on the debt he had created. And 
in his unjust attacks upon petty properties of his neighbors 
in Europe, he had wasted strength that might have intrenched 
France peacefully as mistress in Asia and America. Intellec- 
tually, however, France was now the acknowledged leader of 
Europe. The court of Louis XIV was the model on which 
every court in Europe sought to form itself. French thought, 
French fashions, the French language, became the common 
property of all polite society. 

"I am the state" is a famous saying ascribed to Louis XIV. 
Whether he said it or not, he might have done so with perfect 
truth. So might almost any monarch of his day, outside of 
England. Monarchs were everything; the people, so far as 
government was concerned, were nothing. Louis called the 
English parliament "an intolerable evil." If England and 
Holland had not withstood his ambitious dreams of empire, 
free government would then have perished from the earth. 



CHAPTER LXVIII 

THE RISE OF RUSSIA 

Early Russian history is a blank or a mass of doubtful legends. Russia 
We know only that before the year 900, there was a prince at ^aVr^ 
Moscow ruling over the Russian Slavs from Novgorod to Conquest 
Kiev. Toward the close of the next century, Greek Christianity °^ ^^^^ 
was introduced from Constantinople, and Greek civilization 
began slowly to make progress among the Russians. But 
geographically Russia is merely a small part of the vast plain 
stretching across northern Asia, peopled in that day by savage 
nomad tribes of Tartars. About 1200, a great military leader 
appeared among those heathen. Taking the title Genghis Khan 
(Lord of Lords) he organized the scattered nomad tribes into a 
terrible fighting machine, and set out to conquer the world. 
The ancient Scythian and Hunnish invasions were repeated 
upon a larger scale and with greater horrors. Genghis turned 
fertile countries into deserts and populous districts into tombs, 
marked by enormous pyramids of blackened corpses. He 
conquered China, northern India, and Persia, while his son 
invaded Europe. In 1223 the rising Christian state of Russia 
was crushed, and the Mongol empire reached from Peking and 
the Indus to Crimea and the Dnieper. 

The death of the Great Khan (1227) recalled his son to Asia ; 
but ten years later the assault on Europe was renewed. Mos- 
cow was burned, and northern Russia became a tributary 
province. These new Huns even crossed the Danube ; but 
again Western Europe was saved by the death of a Mongol 
emperor. Soon after, the huge Tartar realm fell into fragments. 
But for three centuries a Tartar state, the Golden Horde, 
maintained itself in southern Russia; and the whole Russian 

681 



682 



THE RISE OF RUSSIA 



realm has felt ever since the baleful influence of the long Tartar 
dominion. 

In 1480 a tributary Russian prince threw off the Tartar yoke, 
and one of his near successors, Ivan the Terrible, took the title 
Tsar (from Caesar, the old Roman title for an emperor). Under 
this Ivan, by 1550, when the religious wars were beginning 
in Western Europe, Riissia reached from the inland Caspian 
northward and westward over much of the vast eastern plain 
of Europe, stretching even into Asiatic Siberia. But it had 
no seacoast except on the ice-locked Arctic, and no touch 
with Western Europe. Tartars and Turks still shut it off 
from the Black Sea ; the Swedes shut it from the Baltic 
(p. 635) ; and the Poles prevented any contact with Germany. 

Thus the Russians were really Asiatic in geography. The 
tsars imitated the Tartar khans in their rule and court. The 
people were Asiatic in dress, manners, and thought. They 
belonged to the Greek church ; but they had no other tie with 
European life. 

To make this Russia a European Power was the work of Peter 
the Great. Peter was a barbaric genius of tremendous energy, 
clear intellect, and ruthless will. He admired the material re- 
sults of Western civilization, and he determined to Europeanize 
his people. As steps toward this, he meant to get the Baltic 
coast from Sweden, and the Black Sea from the Turks, so as to 
have "windows to look out upon Europe." 

Early in his reign, the young Tsar decided to learn more 
about the Western world he had admired at a distance. In 
Holland, as a workman in the navy yards, he studied shipbuild- 
ing. He visited most of the countries of the West, impressing 
all who met him with his insatiable voracity for information. 
He inspected cutleries, museums, manufactories, arsenals, 
departments of government, military organizations. He col- 
lected instruments and models, and gathered naval and military 
stores. He engaged choice artists, goldbeaters, architects, 
workmen, officers, and engineers, to return with him to Russia, 
by promises, not well kept, of great pay. 



PETER "THE GREAT" 



683 



With these workmen Peter sought to introduce Western Peter 
civilization into Russia. The manners of his people he re- • ^",y°P^^°- 
formed by edict. He himself cut off the Asiatic beards of Russia 
his courtiers and clipped the bottoms of their long robes. 
Women were ordered to put aside their veils and come out of 
their Oriental seclusion. Peter " tried to Europeanize by Asiatic 




Moscow. — A view of the center of the c'it\- frmn the sduth hank of the 
river, just across from the KremHn. That ancient fortress dates back 
to the 14th century. Its walls inclose 98 acres. This view gives a 
good idea of the peculiar Russian architecture of sacred and official 
buildings as they showed in the time of Peter. 



methods." He "civilized by the cudgel." The upper classes 
did take on a European veneer. The masses remained Oriental. 

Peter was more successful in starting Russia on her march Expansion 
toward the European seas. On the south, he himself made no ^^^^^ea^ 
permanent advance, despite a series of wars with Turkey ; but 
he bequeathed his policy to his successors, and, from his day 
to the opening of the World War, Constantinople was a chief 
goal of Russian ambition. 



684 



THE RISE OF RUSSIA 



The "Baltic window" Peter himself secured, by victory over 
Charles XII of Sweden, " the Glorious Madman of the North." 
Sweden was a thinly populated country with no great natural 
resources. For a century a line of great kings and the disci- 
plined bravery of her soldiery had made her a leading power in 
Europe ; but such leadership could hardly be permanent. She 
had grown at the expense of Russia, Poland, Denmark, and 
Brandenburg; and when Charles XII came to the Swedish 
throne (1697) as a mere boy of fifteen, these states leagued 
against him. 

Charles was a military genius, and for a long time he was 
victorious against this overwhelming coalition. But he wore 
out his resources in winning victories that did not destroy his 
huge antagonists. Early in the struggle he defeated Peter the 
Great at Narva, with an army not more than an eighth as large 
as the Russian force ; but while Charles was busied in Poland 
and Germany, Russia recovered herself, and in 1709 Peter 
crushed Charles at Pultava. 

Peter had said that the Swedes would teach him how to beat 
them. Now this had come to pass. Siveden never recovered 
her military supremacy. Russia secured the SA^edish provinces 
on the east coast of the Baltic as far north as the Gidf of Finland. 
These districts had been colonized, three centuries before, by 
German nobles (pp. 524, 541), and German civilization was 
strongly implanted there. It was in this new territory that 
Peter founded St. Petersburg, recently renamed Petrograd. 

The next important acquisition of territory was under the 
Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter, who seized part of Fin- 
land from Sweden. Toward the close of the century, under 
Catherine II, Russia made great progress on the south along the 
Black Sea and on the west at the expense of Poland (p. 691). 
This last change can be understood only in connection with the 
rise of Prussia. 



CHAPTER LXIX 

PRUSSIA IN EUROPE — ENGL AND IN NEW WORLDS 

One of the German "marks" established in the tenth century Frederick of 
as bulwarks against the Slavs (p. 524 ) was Brandenburg. Under ^oiiem' 
a race of fighting margraves it grew from century to century, Elector of 
and about 1200 its ruler became one of the "Electors" of the ^^^ 
Empire. In 1415, the first line of Brandenburg Electors ran 
out; and Frederick of Hohenzollern, a petty count in the Alps 
(like the Hapsburgs a century and a half before), bought Branden- 
burg from the Emperor. 

Shortly after 1600 came the next important Hohenzollern The 
acquisition. By family inheritance, the Elector -of Branden- ^oUerns 
burg fell heir to two considerable principalities, — the duchy of gain 
Cleves on the extreme west of Germany, and the duchy of Prussia 
outside the Empire on the extreme east. Prussia was the name 
of a district which the Teutonic Knights had conquered in 
the fourteenth century from the heathen Slavs (map after p. 
550), and which they held as vassals of the king of Poland. 
Its people remained for the most part a mass of Letts and Slavs. 

Toward the close of the Thirty Years' War, Frederick William, The " Great 
" the Great Elector," came to the throne of Brandenburg — fnTthe 
a coarse, cruel, treacherous, shrewd ruler. The Protestants Thirty 
were getting the upper hand in the war. Frederick William ^^^ 
joined them, and, as his reward, at the Peace of Westphalia 
he secured eastern Pomerania (p. 635). This brought Branden- 
burg to the sea. 

The "Great Elector" now crushed out all local assemblies Paternal 
of nobles in his provinces, and all local privileges. Then he despotism 
built up an army among the largest and best in Europe, much 
more costly than his poor realms could well support. He was 

685 • ■ 



686 



THE AGE OF FREDERICK " THE GREAT " 



shrewd enough, however, to see the need of caring for the 
material welfare of his subjects, if they were to be able to 
support his selfish plans ; and so his long reign (1640-1688) 
marks the beginning of the boasted Hohenzollern policy of "good 
government." He built roads and canals, drained marshes, 
encouraged better agriculture, and welcomed to his realms, 
with their manufactures, the Huguenot fugitives from France, 
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 

Frederick, son and successor of the Great Elector, was be- 
sought by Austria to join the alliance against Louis XIV (p. 679). 
In reward for his aid, he then secured the Emperor's consent 
to his changing the title "Elector of Brandenburg" for the 
more stately one of "King in Prussia" (1701). The second 
king of Prussia, Frederick William I, was a rude " drill sergeant," 
memorable only as the stupid father of Frederick the Great. 
He did, however, expend what intellect he had, and what 
money he could wring from his subjects, in enlarging the Prussian 
army ; and he had a curious passion for collecting " tall soldiers " 
from all over Europe. 

Frederick II ("the Great") ascended the Prussian throne in 
1740. In the same year the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles VI, 
died without a male heir, and Frederick began his long reign 
by an unjust but profitable war. The Emperor Charles had 
secured solemn pledges from the powers of Europe, including 
Prussia, that his young daughter, Maria Theresa, should suc- 
ceed to his Austrian possessions. But now, with his perfectly 
prepared army, without having even declared war, on a trumped- 
up claim, Frederick seized Silesia, an Austrian province. 

This high-handed act was the signal for a general onslaught 
to divide the Austrian realms. Spain, France, Savoy, Bavaria, 
each hurried to snatch some morsel of the booty. But Maria 
Theresa displayed courage and ability. Her subjects, especially 
the gallant Hungarian nobles, rallied loyally to her support, 
and, a little later, England and Holland added their strength 
to the Austrian side. This "War of the Austrian Succession" 
closed in 1748. Frederick had shown himself greedy and un- 





EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS 

IN 
AMERICA, 1664-1775 



English 
French 
Spanish 



WARS FOR WORLD EMPIRE 687 

scrupulous, but also the greatest general of the age. He kept 
Silesia. Prussia now reached down into the heart of Germany 
and had become the great rival of Austria. 

Much more important, though less striking, was the contest England 
outside Europe. In America a New England expedition cap- ^^^^^^^^^ 
tured the French fortress of Louisburg. In India the French world 
leader, Dupleix, saw the chance to secure an Asiatic empire ^^^^^^ 
for his country, and captured the English stations in that 
country. 

The treaty of peace restored matters to their former position, 
both in America and Asia, but the ivar made England and France 
feel more clearly thari ever before that they were rivals for vast 
realms outside Europe. Whether Prussia or Austria were to 
possess Silesia, whether France or Austria were to hold the 
Netherlands, were questions wholly insignificant in comparison 
with the mightier question as to what race and what political 
ideas should hold the New Worlds. 

In 1756 Austria began a war of revenge. Maria Theresa The "Seven 

had secured the alliance of Russia, Sweden, and even of her Years' 

. . . War," 

old enemy, France. Four great armies invaded Prussia from 1 756-1 763 

different directions, and Frederick's throne seemed to totter. 

His swift action and his supreme military genius saved his 

country, in the victories of Rossbach and Leuthen. And the 

next year England entered the struggle as his ally. England 

and France had remained practically at war in America and 

India through the brief interval between the two European 

wars ; ^ and now that France had changed to Austria's side, 

England saw no choice but to support Prussia. 

In America this "Seven Years' War" is known as the "French 
and Indian War." The struggle was literally world-wide. 
Red men scalped one another by the Great Lakes of North 
America, and Black men fought in Senegal in Africa; while 
Frenchmen and Englishmen grappled in India as well as in 
Germany, and their fleets engaged on every sea. The most 
tremendous and showy battles took place in Germany; and, 

1 Braddock's campaign in America (1754) took place during this interval. 



688 



ENGLAND WINS INDIA 



though the real importance of the struggle lay outside Europe, 
still the European conflict in the main decided the wider results. 
William Pitt, the English minister, who was working to build 
up a great British empire, declared that in Germany he would 
conquer America from France. He did so. England furnished 
the funds and her navy swept the seas. Frederick and Prussia, 
supported by English subsidies, furnished the troops and the 
generalship for the European battles. The striking figures of 
the struggle are (1) Pitt, the great English imperialist, the 
directiijig genius of the war; (2) Frederick of Prussia, the mili- 
tary genius, who won Pitt's victories in Germany ; (3) Wolfe, 
who won French America from the great Montcalm; and 
(4) Clive in India. 

Dupleix (p. 687) had built up a powerful league of native 
states on the side of the French, and had almost driven the 
English out of India. But now he had been recalled by the 
short-sighted French government, and so the ground was 
cleared for a great English leader. Clive was an unknown 
English clerk at Madras. The native Nabob of Bengal treach- 
erously seized the English post at Calcutta, induced the garrison 
to surrender on the promise of good treatment, and then suffo- 
cated them horribly by packing the one hundred and forty-six 
Europeans in a small close dungeon — the famous Black Hole 
of Calcutta — through the hot tropical night. The young 
Clive was moved to vengeance. He organized a small expedi- 
tion of a thousand Englishmen and two thousand faithful 
native troops, and at Plassey (1757) he overthrew the Nabob's 
Oriental army of sixty thousand men. Soon after, English 
supremacy in India was thoroughly established. 



The treaty of peace, in 1763, left Europe without change. But 
in India the French retained only a few unfortified trading 
posts. In America, England received Florida from Spain, 
and Canada and the eastern half of the Mississippi Valley from 
France. France ceded to Spain the western half of the Missis- 
sippi Valley, in compensation for the losses Spain had incurred 



FRANCE WITHDRAWS FROM AMERICA 689 

as her ally ; and, except for her West Indian islands, she herself 
ceased to be an American power. Spain still held South America 
and half North America ; but her vast bulk was plainly decay- 
ing day by day. Holland's wide colonial empire, too, was in 
decline. Erigland stood forth as the leading world-jMiver. 

The struggle in America had really been a war, not between Why 
Montcalm and Wolfe, but between two kinds of colonization. The ^'^sland 

■' won 

better kind won. Man for man, the French settlers were more America 
successful woodsmen and Indian fighters than their English 
rivals ; but they could not build a state so well. They got a good 
start first, and they had much the stronger position. But, 
after a century of such fostering care as we described on p. 672, 
the French colonies did not grow. When the final conflict began, 
in 1754, France, with a home population four times that of, Eng- 
land, had: only one tioentieth as many colonists in America as 
England had — 60,000 to about 1,200,000. 

Moreover, despite her heroic leaders, the mass of French 
colonists had too little political activity to care much what 
country they belonged to, so long as they were treated de- 
cently. French centralization did make it possible for a capable 
governor to wield effectively all the resources of New France ; ^ 
while among the English there were interminable delays and 
disastrous jealousies. But the English needed to win only once. 
If Montcalm had conquered Wolfe, and had then been able to 
occupy Boston and New York, he could never have held them 
even as long as King George did a few years later. The colonists 
would have fought the French with vastly more determination 
than they did England in the Revolution. But Wolfe's one 
victory at Quebec settled the fate of the continent. 

The lack of political vitality and of individual enterprise in 
industry was the fatal weakness of New France. The opposite 
qualities made England successful. Says John Fiske : "It 

1 The advantage was offset by a tendency to corruption which always 
threatens a despotic system. Says Parkman {Montcalm and Wolfe, II, 30), 
"Canada was the prey of official jackals." Of this his volumes give many 
illustrations. 



690 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 

' is to the self-government of England, and to no lesser cause, that 
we are to look for the secret of that boundless vitality ivhich has 
given to men of English speech the uttermost parts of the earth 
for an inheritance.'^ 

The American Revolution is the next chapter in this series 
of wars. That Avar began because the EngKsh government 
unwisely insisted upon managing American affairs after the 
Americans were quite able to take care of themselves. Its 
real importance, even to Europe, lay in the establishment 
of an independent American nation and in teaching England, 
after a while, to improve her system of colonial government.^ 
But at the time, France and Spain saw in the American Rcao- 
lution a chance to revenge themselves upon England by help- 
ing the best part of her empire to break away. 

England did lose most of her empire in America ; but she 
came out of the war with gains as well as losses, and with 
glory little tarnished. She had been fighting, not x\merica 
alone, but France, Spain, Holland, and America. Theodore 
Roosevelt has put finely the result and character of this wider 
struggle {Gouvcrneur Morris, 116) : 

"England, hemmed in by the ring of her foes, fronted them with a 
grand courage. In her veins the Berserker blood was up, and she hailed 
each new enemy with grim delight, exerting to the full her warlike 
strength. Single-handed she kept them all at bay, and repaid with crip- 
pling blows the injuries they had done her. In America, alone, the tide 
ran too strong to be turned. But Holland was stripped of all her colo- 
nies ; in the East, Sir Eyre Coote beat down Hyder Ali, and taught Mos- 
lem and Hindoo alilce that they could not shake off the grasp of the iron 
hands that held India ; Rodney won back for his country the supremacy 

1 The English colonial system in America had not been cruel or tyrannical 
nor seriously hampering in industry. Indeed, on both the industrial and 
political side, it was vastly more liberal than was the colonial policy of any 
other country in that age. But after Canada fell to England (p. 688), so 
that the colonists in the English colonies no longer feared French conquest, 
they began to resent even the slight interference of the English government. 
The freest people of the age, they were ready and anxious for more freedom, 
Cf. West's American People, pp. 185-191. 



PARTITIONS OF POLAND 



691 



of the ocean in that great sea-fight where he sliattered the splendid 
French navy ; and the long siege of Gibraltar [p. 680] closed with the 
crushing overthrow of the assailants. So, with bloody honor, England 
ended the most disastrous war she had ever waged." 

The secession of the American colonies did not injure England 
as her friends and foes had expected it to do. The commerce 
of the United States continued to be carried on mainly through 
England, and, very soon, the new nation, with its growing 
wealth, was buying more English goods than the old colonies 



jjj^_^^__J,,,.J|TS 




f 


M'. :, 


■ 


1 


^H^Hjj^^B^^^r^^ 1 


1 
< 


i 



Crossed Swords of Colonel William Prcscott and C'a]iiaiii .Iulm Linzee, 
who fought on opposite sides at Bunker Hill. A grandson of l^rescott 
and a granddaughter of Linzee married, and their offspring mounted 
these heirlooms in this way "in token of international friendship and 
family alliance." Now in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society. 

had been able to pay for. For her territorial loss, England 
found compensation, too, to some degree, in the acquisition of 
Australia. 



Just before the i\.merican Revolution began, Russia, Prussia, 
and Austria united to murder the old kingdom of Poland, so 
as to divide the carcass. The anarchy of Poland gave its neigh- 
bors excuse. The population consisted of about twelve million 
degraded serfs, and one hundred thousand selfish, oligarchic 
nobles. The latter constituted the government. The^^ met 
in occasional Diets, and, when the throne became vacant, they 
elected the figurehead king. Unanimous consent was required 
for any vote in the Diet, — each noble possessing the right of 
veto. 

Under such conditions, the Powers of Europe had begun to 
play with Poland at will. Catherine II of Russia determined 



" Parti- 
tion " of 
Poland 



692 



THE "BENEVOLENT DESPOTS" 



to seize a large part of the country. Frederick II persuaded 
Austria to join him in compelHng Catherine to share the booty. 
The "First Partition," in 1772, pared oiT a rind about the 
heart. The Second and Third Partitions (1793, 1795), which 
completed the work and "assassinated the kingdom," had not 
even the pretext of misgovernment in Poland. The Poles 
had undertaken sweeping reforms, and the nation made an 
heroic defense under its hero-leader Kosciusko ; but the 
great robbers wiped Poland off the map. Russia gained far 
the greatest part of the territory, and she now bordered Germany 
on the east, as France did on the west. 

Plainly the true policy of the Germans, early and late, would 
have been the honest one of supporting the "buffer states" — 
Poland and Burgundy — against the greed of Russia and 
France. Failure to do so left Germany exposed to immediate 
attack by powerful enemies and compelled her to build up 
artificial frontiers of fortresses and bayonets. Frederick II's 
reign doubled Prussia in size, but at a terrible cost to future 
generations. 



Frederick II had shown himself a greedy robber and a mili- 
tary genius. With brutal cynicism he avowed absolute freedom 
from moral principle where a question of Prussia's power was 
at stake. Success, he declared, justified any means. This 
faithlessness he practiced, as well as taught ; and his success 
made this policy the creed of later Hohenzollerns. 

But there was another side to Frederick's life, which, 
more properly than his war or his diplomacy, earns him his 
title of "the Great." Most of his forty-six j'ears' reign was 
passed in peace, and he proved a father to his people. The 
beneficent work of the Great Elector was taken up and carried 
forward vigorously. Prussia was transformed. Wealth and 
comfort increased by leaps. The condition of the peasantry 
was improved, though, of course, they remained serfs ; and the 
administration in all its branches was made economical and 
efficient. Unlike all the earlier Hohenzollerns, Frederick- was 



benevo- 
lent 



AND THEIR FAILURE 693 

also a patron of literature — though he admh'ed only the arti- 
ficial French style of the age — and he was himself an author. 

Frederick is a type of the " crowned philosopheis," or " benevo- The 
lent despots," who sat upon the thrones of Europe in the latter 
half of the eighteenth century, just before the French Revolu- despots ' 
tion. Under the influence of a new enlightened sentiment, 
government underwent a marvelous change. It was just as 
autocratic as before, — no more hy the people than before, — 
but despots did try to govern /or the people, not for themselves. 
Sovereigns began to speak of themselves, not as privileged 
proprietors, but, in Frederick's phrase, as "the first servants 
of their states." 

Catherine of Russia, Charles III of Spain, Leopold, Arch- 
duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand of Naples, Joseph II of Austria, 
all belonged to the class of philosophic, liberal-minded, " benevo- 
lent despots," of this period. In Sweden and Portugal two 
great ministers sought to impose a like policy upon the kings. 
All these rulers ■planned far-reaching reforms, — the abolition 
of serfdom, the building up of public education, and the reform 
of the church. 

Frederick's genius and tireless energy accomplished some- 
thing for a time ; but on the ivhole the monarchs made lamen- 
table failures. One man was powerless to lift the inert weight 
of a nation. The clergy and nobles, jealous for their pri\d- 
leges, opposed and thwarted the royal will. Except in Eng- 
land and France, there was no large middle class to supply 
friendly officials and sympathy. The kings, too, wished no 
participation by the people in the reforms : everything was to 
come from above. When the "benevolent despots" had to 
choose between benevolence and despotism they always chose 
despotism. 

The most remarkable, and in some ways the greatest of 
these philosophic despots, was Joseph II of Austria, the son 
of Maria Theresa. His task was harder than that of any of 
his fellows because his realms were so heterogeneous, — 
peopled by Germans, Hungarians, South Slavs, Poles, Bo- 



694 THE DARK BEFORE DAWN 

hemians, Italians, Netherlanders. Joseph sought to abolish 
the ancient local distinctions in these varying districts, to 
introduce one orderly government, with one official language 
(German), and within his new state to foster education, abolish 
monasteries, establish freedom of religion, and even to do away 
with serfdom. All nobles and clerical classes, however, resisted 
him fiercely ; and Joseph died disheartened, dictating for 
himself the epitaph, "Here lies a king who designed many 
benefits for his people, but who was unable to accomplish any 
of them." 

The kings had failed to bring about sufficient reform ; and 
now, in France, the people iverc to try for themselves. Our story 
closes in gloom ; but there was soon to show the blood-streaked 
dawn of the French Revolution — which was to bring to Europe 
the beginnings of democracy and equality. 

Further Reading upon the subject of the last three chapters may 
profitably be confined to the great struggle for the New Worlds. The 
student should read Parkman's Works, especially his Montcalm and 
Wolfe and his Half Century of Conflict. The following biographies, too, 
are good : Wilson's Clive, Malleson's Dupleix and Lord Clive, Bradley's 
Wolfe, Lyall's Warreii Hastings, Morley's Walpole. 

REVIEW EXERCISES 

1. Fact Drills. 

a. Dates with their significance : 1520, 1618-1648, 1640-1649, 1660, 

1688, 1713, 1740, 1763, 1783. 

b. List ten important battles between 1500 and 1789. 

2. Review by countries, with "catch-words," from 1500, or from some 

convenient event of about that date, and review English 
history from Alfred the Great. 

3. Make a brief paragraph statement for the period 1648-1787, to 

. include the changes in territory and in the relative power of the 
different European states. 



APPENDIX 

A SELECT LIST OF BOOKS ON ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL 
HISTORY FOR HIGH SCHOOLS 

Prehistoric Culture 

Clodd, E., Story of Primitive Man (" Primer "). Appleton, New York, 

Story of the Alphabet. Appleton. 

Davenport, E., Domesticated Animals and Plants. Ginn, Boston. 

Dodge, R. J., Our Wild Indians. Hartford. 

Holbrook, F., Cave, Mound, and Lake Dwellers. Heath, Boston. 

Jply, N., Man before Metals. Appleton. 

Mason, O. T., Woman's Share in Primitive Culture. Appleton. 

Starr, F., Some First Steps in Human Progress. Flood and Vincent, 
Meadville, Pa. 

It is not suggested that a school library should own all the 
works above, until it is well supplied in other directions. But any 
of them will make entertaining reading. Before the recent rise 
in the cost of bookmaking they were cheap volumes — from 35 
cents to $2.50. More costly, and beautifully illustrated volumes 
in the same field are Solas' Ancient Hunters and Osborn's Men 
of the Old Stone Age. For Fiction, on the same period, the best 
attempt is Stanley Waterloo's Story of Ab. Jack London's Before 
Adam is offensively brutal. 

Oriental History 
Baikie, James, Story of the Pharaohs (illustrated). Macmillan. 
Breasted, J. H., History of the Ancient Egyptians. Scribner, New York. 
The same author has a larger, finely illustrated work covering the 
same ground. 

History of Egypt. Scribner, New York. 

This is the most recent and scholarly work in English on Egypt 
(1909) . But the smaller work is good ; and Baikie's Story (above) 
is perhaps more readable than either. 

1 



2 APPENDIX 

** Davis, William Stearns, Readings in Ancient History. AUyn and 
Bacon, Boston. Two volumes : " Greece and the East " and 
" Rome and the West." (Each $1.20.) 

The first volume contains sixty pages of " source material " on 
Oriental history, with valuable introductions. The Readings (unless 
bought by each student in the class) should be present in the 
library in multiple copies. 

Hommel, F., Civilization of the East (" Primer "). Macmillan. 

Jackson, A. V. W., Zoroaster. Macmillan. 

Jastrow, M., Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria. Lippincott, Phila- 
delphia. 

* Myres, J. L., Dawn of History (Home Universities Series). Holt, 
New York. An admirable and very cheap little book. 

Petrie, W. Flinders, Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt (illustrated). 
McClurg, Chicago. 

Valuable for students in industrial courses, but somewhat techni- 
cal. Professor Petrie is the most famous Egyptian explorer of our 
times. 

Sayce, A. H., Assyria: Its Princes, Priests, and People (illustrated). 
Re veil, Chicago. 

Babylonians and Assyrians. Re veil, Chicago. 

A somewhat later work than the preceding. One of the two is 
well worth while in a high school library. Very readable. 
Winckler, Hugo, Babylonia and Assrjria. Scribner. 

Winckler and Jastrow are more recent ia scholarship than 
Sayce, but hardly so readable. 

Civilization in Ancient Crete 

Baikie, James, Sea Kings of Crete (handsomely illustrated). Mac- 
millan. The best single volume on the topic. 

Hawes and Hawes, Crete, the Forerunner of Greece. Harper, New 
York. 

Greek History 

Source Material. 

* Davis, William Stearns, Readings in Ancient History. This work is 
described in the list for Oriental history above. It is particularly 
valuable for Greek history, and should be the first library material 
purchased on that subject. The use of it, however, will certainly 
lead many students to wish to know more of certain ancient authors 
quoted in it; and the small list below ought to be accessible. 



APPENDIX 3 

Aristotle, On (he Constitution of Athens; translated by Kenyon. Mac- 

millan. 

This is the least readable of the books mentioned in this hst ; but 

it can be used in parts, under a teacher's direction. 
Herodotus, Rawlinson's translation, edited by Grant; two volumes; 

Scribner. 
Macaulay's translation, two volumes. Macmillan. 

* Homer's Iliad, translated by Lang, Leaf, and Myers. Macmillan. 

* Homer s Odyssey, translated by Butcher and Lang. Macmillan. 

Translated by Palmer. Houghton. 

Plutarch, Lives; translated by Clough ; Everyman's Library (Button, 
New York) ; three volumes, each. 

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. Jowett's translation ; 
Clarendon Press, Oxford; four volumes, or the same edited 
in one volume and published by Lothrop, Boston. 

Everyman's Library (Button, New York) gives several volumes 
of these classics at cheaper rates. Constant additions are made 
to the Library. Herodotus and Thucydides can be obtained also 
in less desirable translations, but much cheaper, in Harper's Classi- 
cal Lfl^rary. 

Modej^n Worhs. 

* Abbott, E., Pericles (" Heroes "). Putnam, New York. 
Bliimmer, H., Home Life of the Ancient Greeks (profusely illustrated). 

Cassell, New York. 

(Still valuable ; but if the Hbrary is buying a new book on the 
subject, it should get Guhck, below.) 

* Bury, J. B., History of Greece to the Death of Alexander. Macmillan. 

* Church, E. J., Trial and Death of Socrates. Macmillan. 

A translation of four of Plato's Bialogues touching upon this 
period of Socrates' life. They are also the easiest of Plato's writ- 
ings for young people to understand. It has valuable comments. 
Cox, G. W., Greeks and Persians. Epochs Series. Longmans, New York. 

* Cox, G. W., The Athenian Empire. Epochs Series. Longmans. 
Cunningham, W., Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects: Ancient 

Times. Macmillan. 
The best work on its special phase. Very full for Greece. 

* Davis, William Steams, A Day in Old Athens. Allyn and Bacon, 

Boston. 

A Victor of Salamis (novel). Macmillan.. 

Exceedingly vivid presentation of Greek Kfe. 



4 APPENDIX 

Gardiner, E. N., Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals (illustrated). Mac- 

millan. 
Gayley, C. M., Classic Myths. Ginn, Boston. 

* Grant, A. J., Greece in the Age of Pericles. Scribner. 

* Gulick, Chas. B., Life of the Ancient Greeks (illustrated). Appleton. 

* Mahaffy, J. P., Alexander's Empire. Putnam, New York. 
Old Greek Life (Primer). American Book Co. 

' Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's Empire. University of 

Chicago Press. 

'•' Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, Alexander the Great (" Heroes "). Putnam. 
Bury is the best single work on Greek history. It closes with 
the death of Alexander. Cox's volumes in the Epochs Series 
are slightly preferable for the Athenian period; and Wheeler's 
Alexander is admirable for its period. For the age after Alexander, 
the best book is Mahaffy's Alexander's Empire or his Progress 
of Hellenism. 

Roman History 
Source Material. 

* Davis, William Stearns, Readings in Ancient History, as for Greek 

History above. 
Mimro, D. C, Source Book in Roman History. Heath. 
Tacitus. 2 vols. Macmillan. 

Modern Works. 

* Beesly, A. H., The Gracchi, Marius and Sulla. Epochs Series. Long- 

mans. 

Bradley, H., The Goths {" Nations "). Putnam. 

Bury, J. B., The Roman Empire to ISO A.D. ("Student's"). Ameri- 
can Book Co. 

* Capes, W. W., Early Roman Empire. Epochs Series. Longmans. 
Age of the Antonines. Epochs Series. Longmans. 

Carr, The Church and the Empire. Longmans. 
Church, A. J., Roman Life in the Days of Cicero. Macmillan. 
Church, R. W., Beginning of the Middle Ages. Epochs Series. Long- 
mans. 
Davis, William Steams, A Friend of Ccesar (fiction). Macmillan. 
Firth, J. B., Augustus Ccesar. Putnam, New York. 

Constantine the Great. Putnam, New York. 

.Fowler, Warde, Caesar {" Heroes "). Putnam, 



APPENDIX 5 

Fowler, Social Life in the Age of Cicero. Macmillan. 
A useful and readable book. 

* How and Leigh, History of Rome to the Death of Caesar. Longmans. 

* Ihne, Wilhelm, Early Rome. Epochs Series. Longmans. 
Inge, W. R., Society in Rome under the Caesars. Scribners. 
Johnston, H. W., Private Life of the Romans. Scott, Foresman & Co. 

Chicago. 
Jones, H. S., The Roman Empire. Putnam. 

* Pelham, H. F., Outlines of Roman History. Putnam. 

A single volume covering the whole period to 476 a.d., by a 
great scholar and teacher. 

Pellison, Roman Life in Pliny's Time. New York. 
Preston and Dodge, Private Life of the Romans. Leach, Boston. 
Smith, R. B., Rome and Carthage. Epochs Series. Longmans. 
Thomas, E., Roman Life under the Caesars. London. 

* Tighe, Ambrose, Development of the Roman Constitution (" Primers ")• 

American Book Co. 

From the " Fall op Rome " to the French Revolution 

Source Material. 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Bohn). 
Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn). 

* Davis, W. S., Readings in Ancient History, II. AUyn and Bacon, 

Boston. 

Einhard, Charlemagne. American Book Company. 

English History from Contemporary {Writers). Edited by F. York- 
Powell. 

A series of ten small volumes, all very valuable. Putnam, 
New York. 

* Hill, Mabel, Liberty Documents. Longmans. 
Joinville, Memoir of St. Louis. (Various editions.) 
Lanier (editor), The Boy's Froissart. Scribner. 

Marco Polo, The Story of, edited by Noah Brooks. Century Co. 

* Ogg, T. A., Source Book of Medieval History. American Book Co. 
Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints from Original Sources. 7 vols. 

Published by University of Pennsylvania. 

* Robinson, J. H., Readings in European History. 2 vols. Giun. 



6 APPENDIX 

Modern. Worhs. 

Adams, G. B., Growth of the French Nation. Macmillan. 

Civilization During the Middle Age. Scribner. 

* Archer and Kingsford, The Crusades (" Nations "). Putnam. 
Balzani, Popes and Hohenstaufen. Longmans. 

Beard, Charles, An Introduction to English Historians (extracts from 
leading authorities on interesting topics). Macmillan. 

Beesly, E. S., Elizabeth (" English Statesmen ")• Macmillan. 

Boyeson, H. H., Norioay (" Nations ")• Putnam. 

Bradley, Wolfe. Macmillan. 

Brown, Horatio, The Venetian Republic (" Temple Primers ")• Mac- 
millan. 

* Bryce, James, Holy Roman Empire. Macmillan. 

* Cheyney, E. P., Industrial and Social History of England. Mac- 

millan. 
Church, Beginnings of the Middle Ages (" Epochs "). Longmans. 
Clemens (Mark Twain), Joan of Arc. Harper. 
Cornish, F. W., Chivalry. Macmillan. 
Cox, G. W., The Crusades (" Epochs ")• Longmans. 
Creighton, M., Age of Elizabeth (" Epochs "). Longmans. 
Cunningham, Western Civilization (Vol. II, Medieval and Modern). 

Macmillan. 
Cunningham and McArthur, Outlines of English Industrial History. 

Macmillan. 
Davis, H. W. C, Charlemagne (" Heroes "). Putnam. 

(Or see Hodgkin's Charles in the supplementary list below.) 

* Emerton, Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages. Ginn. 
Medieval Europe. Ginn. 

Firth, Cromwell (" Heroes "). Putnam. 

Gardiner, S. R., Student's History of England. Longmans. 

The Puritan Revolution (" Epochs "). Longmans. 

The Thirty Years' War ("Epochs "). Longmans. 

Gibbins, Industrial History of England. Methuen ; London. 
Gilman, The Saracens (" Nations")- Putnam. 
Gray, The Children's Crusade. Houghton. 

* Green, J. R., History of the English People. 4 vols. Burt; New 

York. 

Or, in place of this last work, 



APPENDIX 7 

* Green, J. R., Short History of the English People. American Book 

Co. 

Green, Mrs., Henry II. Macmillan. 

Hughes, Thomas, Alfred the Great. Macmillan. 

Jenks, Edward Plantagenet (" Heroes "). Putnam. 

Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars. Putnam. 

Jiriczek, Northern Hero Legends. Macmillan. 

Johnston, C, and Spencer, C, Ireland's Story. Houghton. 

Lane-Poole, Saladin (" Heroes ")• Putnam. 

Lindsay, T. M., Luther and the German Reformation. Scribner. 

Masterman, J. H. B., Dawn of Medieval Europe (" Six Ages "). Mac- 
millan. 

Motley, The Stude7it's Motley, — the best history of the Dutch Re- 
public in its heroic age ; edited by Griffis. Harper. 

Mullinger, University of Cambridge. Longmans. 

Oman, C. W. C, Byzantine Empire {" Nations ")• Putnam. 

Parkman, Francis. Half-Century of Conflict, 2 vols. Montcalm and 
Wolfe. 2 vols. New France. Little Brown & Co. 

Pears, E., Fall of Constantinople. Harper. 

Perry, F., St. Louis (" Heroes "). Putnam. 

Pollard, History of England (" Home University "). Holt. 

* Shepherd, W. R., Historical Atlas. Holt. 
Stubbs, Early Plantagenets (" Epochs ")• Longmans. 
Tout, T. F., Edivard I. Macmillan. 

Van Dyke, History of Painting. New York. 

Walker, W., The Reformation. Scribner. 

Ward, The Counter- Reformation. Longmans. 

Willert, Henry of Navarre (" Heroes ")• Putnam. 

Woodward, W. H., Expansion of the British Empire, 1500-1902. Put- 
nam. 

Zimmern, H., The Hansa {" Nations ")• Putnam. 

These lists do not contain nearly all the books in these fields 
which may well be found in a large high school library. They 
represent only such volumes as ought to be coristantly accessible to 
a first-year class in the study. When two books on the same field 
are named, one of them distinctly preferable to the other (as with 
Bliimmer and Gulick on Greek Life), this is done because the 
library may already have the older work — in which case it is not 
worth while to buy the other until more pressing needs are well 



8 APPENDIX 

supplied. The starred volumes should be present in mullij>le copies. 
It seems desirable to add the following supplementary list for the 
larger schools. 

Some Additional Books on the Last Period 

Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History. Vol. I, Part I. 
Longmans. 

Beard, Martin Luther. London. 

Beazley, Prince Henry the Navigator ("Heroes"). Putnam. 

Bourne, E. G., Spain in America (Am. Nation Series). Harper. 

Bradley, Wolfe. Macmillan. 

Caldecott, Alfred, English Colonization and Empire, (University Exten- 
sion Manuals). New York. 

Cutts, Parish Priests and Their People. London. 

Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. New York. 

Du Chaillu, The Viking Age. 2 vols. Murray. 

Fletcher, Gustavus Adolphus (" Heroes "). Putnam. 

Fox-Bourne, Sir Philip Sidney (" Heroes "). Putnam. 

Gasquet, F. A., Parish Life in Medieval England. New York. 

Harrison, F., William the Silent. Macmillan. 

Hodgkin, T., Charles the Great. MacmiUan. 

James, G. P. R., History of Chivalry. Harper. 

Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages. London. 

Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom. Putnam. 

Liibke, History of Art. 2 vols. Dodd and Mead. 

McCabe, Abelard. Putnam. 

Morison, Life and Times of St. Bernard. Macmillan. 

Putnam, Ruth, Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages. Putnam. 

Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch. Putnam. 

Sabatier, St. Francis. Scribner. 

Saintsbury, Flourishing of Romance. Scribner. 

Seeley, Expansion of England. Macmillan. 

Smith, J. H., The Troubadours at Home. Putnapa. 

Stephens, W. R. W., Hildebrand and His Times. Longmans. 

Symonds, J. A., Short History of the Renaissance in Italy (edited by 
Pearson) . Scribner. 

Vincent, The Age of Hildebrand. Scribner. 

Weil, Fenice (" Nations "). Putnam. 

York-Powell, Alfred the Truth-Teller. Putnam. 



INDEX 



Pronunciation, except for familiar names and terms, is shown by divi- 
sion into syllables and accentuation. When diacritical marks for English 
names are needed, the common marks of Webster's Dictionaries are used. 
German and French pronunciation can be indicated only imperfectly to 
those who are not familiar with the languages ; but attention is called to 
the following marks : ae and ue = e ; ei = i; the soft aspirated guttural 
sound g of the German is marked g ; the corresponding ch (as in icli) is 
marked k ; the sound of the nasal French n is marked n ; for the German 
a and au the equivalents are indicated, to prevent confusion with English 
a ; is always the German letter ; and u is the German diphthong or the 
equivalent French u. In French words with an accent on the final syl- 
lable, that accent only is marked ; but it should be understood that in 
such words the syllables as a rule receive nearly equal stress. 

For most geographical names, except such common ones as England 
or Italy, the index indicates a map on which the location is shown. 



Aachen (ach-'cn), 463, 470 ; map 
after p. 464. 

Aargau (ar'gou), map, 585. 

Abbot, term explained, 448, note. 

Abelard (ab'e-lard), Peter, 555, 558. 

Abraham, founder of Hebrews, 76. 

Absolution, by the Church, 496. 

Absolutism, 415. 

Abyssinia (ab-ys-sin'i-a), 41 ; map, 
p. 18. 

Academy, Plato's at Athens, see 
Museum. 

Accad (ac'cad), 49 ; map after p. 66. 

Achaea (a-ehje'a), maps after pp. 
81, 90. 

Achaean (a-€hS'an) culture, 91 ff. ; 
overthrown by Dorians, 103. 

Achaean (a-ehS'an) League, 223 ff. ; 
constitution, 223-224 ; aristo- 
cratic, 225 ; and Aratus, 225 ff. ; 



and Sparta, 227-228 ; fall, 228 ; 
map, p. 224. 

Achaeans (a-«hEe'ans), mythical 
origin of, 105. 

Achaeus (a-ehse'us), fabled ances- 
tor of Achaeans, 105. 

Achilles (a-chll'lej) , 97, 101-102. 

Acropolis (a-crop'o-lis), the central 
hill-fort about which grew up an- 
cient cities, 95 ; see, for Italy, 242. 

Acropolis of Athens, in age of Peri- 
cles, 168-171 ; plan of, 168 ; res- 
toration, 162 ; to-day, 178. 

Act of Settlement (English), 667. 

Act of Supremacy (Enghsh), 617. 

Act of Union (England and Scot- 
land), 668. 

Actium (ac'ti-um), Battle of, 353 ; 
map after p. 81. 

Adrianople (ad'ri-an-o'ple), Battle 



10 



INDEX 



of, in 378 a.d., 435 ; map after 
p. 364. 

Adriatic Sea, dividing line between 
Greek and Latin cviltures, 306, 
438 ; between Greek and Roman 
churches, 458, 459. 

Aediles (ae'diles), Roman, 273. 

Aegaean (ae-g^'an) culture, 82 H. ; 
see irnosso.s, Cretan culture, My- 
cenae. 

Aegaean (ae-g^'an) Sea, liome of 
early culture, 82 and elsewhere ; 
maps after pp. 81, 90, 198. 

Aegina (ae-gi'na), 137 ; map after 
p. 81. 

Aegospotami (ae-g6s-p6t'a-mi) 

(Goat Rivers), Battle of, 200; 
map after p. 198. 

Aemilianus (ae-mil-i-a'nus), Pub- 
lius Scipio, 299. 

Aeneas (ae-ne'as), 338. 

Aeolus (ae'o-lus), fabled ancestor 
of Ae-o'li-ans, 105. 

Aequians (e'kwi-jins), map, 242. 

Aeschylus (aes'^hy-las), 171-172 ; 
on Salamis, 148-149. 

Aetius (a-e'ti-us) , 438. 

Aetolian (ae-tol'i-an) League, 224; 
map, p. 224. 

Afghanistan (af-g/ian-is-tan') , 214 ; 
map after p. 214. 

Africa, early copper civilizations in 
Nile Valley, 12; see Egypt; cir- 
cumnavigation of, by ancient 
Egyptians, 44-45 ; Phoenician 
colonies in, 75 ; Greek colonies 
in, 108; prosperity under Rome, 
371 ; Vandal kingdom in, 436 ; 
reconquered by Justinian, 438 ; 
conquered by Mohammedans, 454 ; 
see Egypt and Carthage. 

Agamemnon (ag-a-mem'non), 97. 

Age of Pericles, 159-183. 



Agesilaus (a-ges-i-la'us), king of 
Sparta, 204. 

Agincourt (aj'in-cort, or a-zhaii- 
kuor') Battle of, 573. 

Agis (a'gis), reformer at Sparta, 
226-227. 

Agora (ag'o-ra), at Athens, map, p. 
157, and description. 

Agrarian Laws, term explained, 323, 
note; Solon's, 118; of Agis and 
Cleomenes, 227 ; Licinian, 258 ; 
of the Gracchi, 323 ff . ; of Caesar, 
347-348. 

Agricola (a-gric'o-la), 364; wall of, 
in Britain, 364. 

Agriculture, prehistoric, woman's 
part in, 9, 10 ; selection of food- 
plants, 15; in Egypt, 21, 29-30; 
in Assyria, 54, 59 ; in Homeric 
Greece, 98-99 ; in age of Pericles, 
189-190; early Roman, 253;. Ro- 
man about 200 B.C., 277 ; after 
Punic Wars, 315-317 ; under the 
Empire, 374 ; serf labor in later 
Empire, 428-429 ; primitive in 
Empire of Charlemagne, 464 ; 
under Feudal system, 485-487 ; 
Saracenic, 534. 

Ahura Mazda (a-hii'ra maz'da), 72. 

Alaric (al'ar-ic) (the Goth), 435. 

Alba Longa (al'ba 16u-ga), 242; 
map, 242. 

Albigenses (al'bi-gen'ses), 614. 

Alcaeus (al-cS'us), lover of Sappho, 
121. 

Alchemy (al'€heni-y) , 535. 

Alcibiades (al-ci-bi'a-dej), 199. 

Alcuin (al'kwin), 465. 

Alemanni (a-la-man'ne), 409, 419. 

Alexander the Great, 212 ff. ; youth 
and character, 212 ; accession and 
restoration of order, 213 ; invades 
Asia as champion of Hellas, 213 ; 



INDEX 



11 



Persian campaigns, 213-214 ; in 
the Far Bast, 214 ; results of 
work, 215 ff . ; routes on map after 
p. 214. 

Alexandria VI, Pope, 581. 

Alexandria, name of many Greek 
cities in Asia, 215; map after p. 
214. 

Alexandria in Egypt, founded, 214 ; 
glory of, 229 f£. ; library at, 233 ; 
and lighthouse, 235 ; center of 
culture under Rome, 382 ; map 
after p. 214. 

Alexandrian Library, 234. 

Alexandrian Lighthouse, 235. 

Alexandrian Museum, 233. 

Alfred the Great, 472-474. 

Algebra, origin, 535. 

Alhambra (al-ham'bra), 456. 

Allah (al'lah), term explained, 453. 

AUia' (al'li-i^) , Battle of, 261 ; map, 
p. 242. 

" Allies," the Italian, of Rome, 267, 
268 ; become Roman citizens, 331. 

Alphabet, growth, 14-16 ; Plioeni- 
cian, 76; Cretan, 86-87. 

Alsace (al-sii^e'), becomes French, 
635. 

Alva (iil'va), Duke of, 628. 

America, discovery, 601-603 ; ex- 
pansion of Europe into, 669 ff. ; 
Spain in, 669 ; France in, and fail- 
ure, 670-672 ; England in, 073- 
676 ; and European wars of 18th 
century, 679-680, 687-690; the 
American Revolution, 690-691. 

Amphictyonies, 107. 

Amphictyonic (am-phic-ty-on'ic) 
League, the, 107. 

Amphitheater (am-phi-the'a-ter), 
Etruscan origin of sports in, 313 ; 
term explained, 314 ; see Gladia- 
torial Games, Colosseum. 



Amten, statue of, 22. 

Anabasis (an-ab'a-sis), the, of Xen- 

ophon, 174. 
Anaxagoras (an-ax-ag'o-ras), 174- 

175. 
Anaximenes (an-ax-im'e-neg), Greek 

philosopher, 113. 
Ancestor worship, primitive, 7 ; 

Egyptian, 37 ; Greek, 99 ; Ro- 
man, 246. 
Ancient History, term defined, 465. 
Ancus Martius (an'cus ma,r'ti-us), 

241. 
Andrea del Sarto (an-dro'ii del 

sitr'to), 597. 
Angelico, Fra (fra an-gel'i-co), 597. 
Angles (an'gles), in Britain, 471 ; 

map after 430. 
Animal worship, 37. 
Anio (a'ni-o) River, 255 ; map, 242. 
Anjou (Fr., an-zhob'), 509; map 

after p. 522. 
Anne, Queen of England, 667. 
Anselm, 528, note. 
Antigone (an-tig'o-ne), 182. 
Antioch, 373, 539 ; map after p. 

364. 
Antiochus (an-ti'6-€hus) IV, of 

Syria, 301, 302. 
Antonines (an'to-nlnes) , the, 305 ff. 
Antoninus (an-to-ni'nus), Marcus 

Aurelius, 309, 400 ; quotations 

from, 396-397. 
Antoninus Pius, 368. . 
Antonius (an-to'ni-us), Marcus 

(Mark Anthony), 351-353. 
Apelles (a-pel'les), 229. 
iiphrodite (aph-ro-dl'te), 101. 
Apollo (a-pol'lo), 100. 
Appian (ap'pi-an) Way, the, 269, 

270 ; see Roman Roads, and map 

p. 209. 
Appius Claudius, censor. 209, 275. 



i_. 



12 



INDEX 



Appius Claudius, decemvir, 256, 
257. 

Apprentices, in gilds, 548. 

Aquae Sextiae (ak'we sex'ti-e). 
Battle of, 330 ; map after p. 287. 

Aqueducts, of Pisistratus, 122 ; in 
Graeco-Oriental cities, 216 ; in 
Eoman cities, 371. 

Aquitaine (a-kwi-tan'), map after 
451. 

Arabic notation, 535, 542. 

Aratus (a-ra'tus), of Achaean 
League, 225-228. 

Arbela (ar-be'la). Battle of, 214; 
map after p. 214. 

Arc, Joan (Joan) of, 574. 

Arcadia (ar-ca'dl-a), map after p. 
81. 

Arcadius (ar-ca'di-us)., 421. 

Arch, Egyptian, 35 ; Babylonian 
(oldest known), 49 ; Roman, 280 ; 
in Gothic architecture, 563. 

Archbishops, origin, 422 ; in Middle 
Ages, 496-497. 

Archimedes (ar-chi-me'deg), 233, 
292. 

Architecture, prehistoric, 11, 12 ; 
Egyptian, 26-28, 35 ; in Chaldea 
and Assyria, 61-62 ; Persian bor- 
rowed, 67 ; Grecian, orders of, 
110-111 ; in age of Pericles, 167- 
170, 184-186 ; early Roman, 280 ; 
in later Republic, 312 ; early 
Empire, 382 ; early Christian, 
408 ; Saracenic, 534 • Roman- 
esque; 560; Gothic, 561-563. 

Archon (ar'^hon), 115. 

Areopagus (ar-e-6p'a-gus). Council 
of, 115; map, 157. 

Ares (a'reg), 100. 

Argives (ar'glves), see Argos. 

Argolis (ar'go-lis), map after p. 
81. 



Argos (ar'gos), not in Sparta's 
league, 126 ; map after p. 90. 

Arian (a'rl-an) heresy, 423. 

Ariovistus (a-ri-o-vis'tus), 340. 

Aristarchus (ar-is-tar'^hus), 234. 

Aristides (ar-is-ti'dej), 141, 142, 
148, 155. 

Aristocracy, term explained, 96, 
note, and 114. 

Aristophanes (ar-is-toph'a-nej) , 
172. 

Aristotle (ar'is-tot-le), quoted on 
early Athens, 116, 122 ; and Alex- 
ander, 217 ; philosophy, 231 ; on 
sphericity of the earth, 234 ; au- 
thority in Middle Ages, 558. 

Arithmetic, Egyptian, 35 ; Chal- 
dean, 59 ; Roman, 382 ; Saracenic, 
535. 

Arius (a'ri-us), of Alexandria, 423. 

Armada (ar-ma'da), Spanish, 624- 
625 ; and American colonization, 
670. 

Armenia (ar-me'ni-a) , map after 
p. 214. 

Armor, Roman, 271, 272 ; feudal, 
479-480. 

Arrian (ar'ri-tin), historian, 236, 385. 

Art, prehistoric, 4, 7-8 ; Egyptian, 
32, 35-37 ; Babylonian, 60, 62 ; 
Greek, in age of Pericles, 167-171 ; 
in Alexandrian age, 229-230 ; in 
Middle Ages, 560-561 ; at Renais- 
sance, 597. 

Artaxerxes (ar-ta^xerx'eg), 203. 

Artemis (ar'te-mis), 101. 

Asia, Province of, 333 ; New Testa- 
ment use of " Asia," 333. 

Aspasia (as-pa'si-a), 180. 

Assembly, Homeric folk-meet, 96- 
97 ; Spartan, 127 ; see Athenian, 
Roman, etc. 

Assize of Arms, 510. 



INDEX 



13 



Assyria (as-syr'i-a) , 46 ; people, 
46-48 ; Semitic language, ' 48, ; 
Empire, 49-50 ; militarism, 51 ; 
fall, 52 ; society and culture (see 
Babylonia) ; see map after 47. 

Astarte (as-tar'te), 283. 

Astrology, Chaldean, 59. 

Astronomy, Egyptian, 34 ; Chal- 
dean, 59 ; Greek, 113, 134 ; Sara- 
cenic, 535. 

Athanasius (ath-an-a'si-us), 423. 

Athene (a-the'ne), 100 ; statues of, 
on the Acropolis, 169, 171. 

Athenian Assembly, early, 117, 118 ; 
after Solon, 119-120 ; after Clis- 
thenes, 125 ; in age of Pericles, 
164-167. 

Athens, map after 81 ; plan, 157 ; 
consolidation of Attica by, 95, 
115 ; Homeric government of, 115 ; 
change to oligarchy, 115 ff. ; dis- 
content of the poor, 115-117 ; 
wealth gains political power, 117 ; 
written laws, 117-118 ; Solon's 
reforms, 118-121 ; continued class 
strife, and tyrants, 121-122 ; re- 
forms of Chsthenes, 124-126 ; and 
Ionian Revolt, 136 ; and Persian 
Wars, 137-151 ; Rebuilt, and walls, 
152-153 ; the Piraeus, 153 ; leader- 
ship on Ionian coast, 154 ; and 
Confederacy of Delos, 155-156 ; 
and Athenian Empire, 157 ff. ; 
strife with Sparta, 461-445 b.c, 
159-161 ; Thirty Years' Truce, 
162 ; the Empire in peace, age of 
Pericles, 163 ff. ; power and num- 
bers, 163, 164 ; democracy, 164 ff.; 
art, 169-171 ; drama, 171-173 ; 
oratory, 173-174 ; as described by 
Pericles, 178 ; and Peloponnesian 
War, 195-201 ; resources, 196 ; 
the plague, 197-198 ; new leaders. 



199 ; Sicilian failure, 199 ; oli- 
garchic revolution, and failure, 

200 ; Goat Rivers, 200 ; surrender, 

201 ; under Spartan rule, 202 ff. ; 
"the Thirty," and restoration 
of democracy, 202-203; shelters 
Theban democrats, 205 ; and 
Philip of Macedon, 210-211 ; cen- 
ter of learning under Rome, 382. 

Athens, Duchy of (medieval), 541. 
Athos (a'tlios), Mount, map after, 

81. 
Attica, after Dorian invasions, 104 ; 

consolidated, 115; map after 90 

and on 147. 
Attic Comed3r, 172. 
Attila (at'til-a), 438. 
Augsburg (augsbiirG), Confession 

of, 609 ; Peace of, 609. 
Augurs, Roman, 247. 
Augustine, Saint, 424. 
Augustus, Roman Emperor, 354-357, 

387-389 ; see Octavius Caesar. 
Aurelian (au-re'li-an) , Emperor, 

403. 
Aurelius, see Antoninus. 
Auspicies, Roman, 247 ; Etruscan 

and Babylonian, 247. 
Austrasia (aus-tra'sl-a), division of 

Prankish state, 462 ; map after 460. 
Austria, origin, 524 ; seized by Haps- 

burgs, 581; head of Holy Roman 

Empire, 582 ; and Turks, 583 ; 

and Netherlands, 588 ; and Fred- 
erick of Prussia, 686-688. 
Austrian Succession, War of, 686. 
Autun (6-tuh'), 383; map after p. 

364. 
Avars, 438 ; map after p. 464. 
Aventine (a'ven-tlne), the, map, 

243. 
Avignon (a^ven-yoh), Papacy at, 

579. 



14 



INDEX 



Baal (ba'al), 283. 

Babylon, land and people, 46-48 ; 
prehistoric development, 49 ; and 
Hammurapi, 49; First Empire, 
49 ; Second Empire, 52 ; decay, 
53 ; society, industry, and art, 53- 
64 ; cuneiform script, 56-57 ; laws 
of Hammurapi, 54-55 ; religion 
and morals, 63-64 ; map after 47 ; 
conquered by Persia, 67. 

"Babylonian Captivity," of the 
Church, 579. 

Bacon, Francis, and experimental 
method, ,637 ; quoted on school- 
men, 559. 

Bacon, Roger, 559 ff.; and the mag- 
netic needle, 560 ; and Columbus, 
601-602. 

Bactriana (bac-trl-an'a), map after 
214. 

Bagdad (bag'dad), 467 ; map after 
464. 

"Balance of Power," 677. 

Ball, John, and the Peasant Rising, 
568-569. 

Banking, in Roman Republic, 286- 
287 ; in Roman Empire, 378-379. 

Banquet, in Greek life, 191-192. 

Barbarian Invasions, in Oriental 
history, 52 ; in times of Marius 
and Caesar, 330, 340 ff. ; on fron- 
tiers of Roman Empire, 387 ; into 
Empire from Aurelius to Aurelian, 
399 ff.; success in 4th century, 
434 ff. See Teutons; Huns; 
Norsemen. 

"Barbarians," to Greeks, 104. 

Barbarossa (bar-bar-5s'sa) , Freder- 
ick, 528-529. 

Barca (bar'ca) , see Hamilcar. 

' ' Barrack Emperors, ' ' 399 ff . 

Barter, Trade by, 30 ; replaced first 
by money exchange, 65-66. 



Basilica (ba-sil'i-ca), 408. 

Battle, Trial by, 444. 

Bavaria, map after 450. 

Bayeux (beUe') Tapestry, 503. 

Beaumont (bo'mont), 626. 

Becket, Thomas, and Henry II, 511, 
513-514. 

Belgium, see Netherlands ; and war 
with Spain, 627-629 ; left to 
Spain, 629 ; becomes Austrian, 
680. 

Belvidere (bSl-vi-dere') Apollo, 219. 

" Benefit of clergy," 500. 

Beneventum (ben-e-ven'tum), Bat- 
tle of, 264 ; map after 238. 

"Benevolences " in English history, 
648-649. 

"Benevolent Despots," 693-694. 

Beowulf (be'o-wulf), Song of, 433, 
473, note. 

Bible, the, translated into Greek 
(Old Testament) , 233 ; into Gothic, 
424; into English, 560, 617; into 
German, 608; restricted use of, in 
Protestant England under Henry 
VIII, 617 ; see Erasmus and Vul- 
gate. 

"Bill of Rights," the English, 664- 
665. 

"Bills," origin of, in Parliament, 
572. 

Bishops, origin of, 422 ; in Middle 
Ages, 496. 

Bithynia (bi-thyn'i-a), map after p. 

214. 
"Black Death," the, 566. 
"Black Hole," the, Calcutta, 688. 

Black Sea, and early Greek colonies, 

108. 
Blenheim Cblen'im), Battle of, 680. 
Blois (blwa), Stephen of, 538. 
Boccaccio (bok-kat'chyo), 596. 
Boeotia (boe-o'ti-a), map after p. 81 ; 



INDEX 



15 



leadership divided in, 115 ; see 
Plataea, Thebes. 

Bohemia, map after p. 530 ; added 
to Holy Roman Empire, 581 ; and 
Hussites, 580 ; loses Austria to 
Hapsburgs, 581 ; and the Refor- 
mation, G33. 

Bokhara (bok-a'ra), map after p. 
66. 

Bologna (bo-lon'ya). University of, 
556. 

Boleyn (bool'in), Anne, 616. 

Boniface VIII, Pope, 578-579. 

Bordeaux (bor-d5'), map after p. 
364. 

Borgia (bor'gza) family, 581. 

Boroughs, origin, 505. 

Braddock, Campaign of, 687, note. 

Brandenburg, Mark of, 524 ; see 
Prussia. 

"Bread and Games," 348, 430. 

Brennus (bren'nus), Gaul, 261. 

Britain, and Phoenicians, 74 ; and 
Romans, 359 ; Hadrian's Wall in, 
366, 367 ; abandoned by Romans 
— Teutonic Conquest, 471 ff. ; re- 
Christianized, 172 ; see England. 

Bronze Age, the, 12-13 ; in Chaldea, 
47. 

Brunetto Latini . (brii-net'to la- 
te'ne), and Roger Bacon, 560. 

Brutus, Marcus, 349, 350. 

"Bull," the Papal, term explained, 
497. 

Bunyan, John, 662. 

Burgundians, settlement in Gaul, 
435 ; map after 486. 

Burgundy, Duchy of, map after p. 
522. 

Byzantine (by-zan'tine) Empire, 
see Greek Empire. 

Byzantium (by-zan'ti-um), 108, 
218 ; maps after 108, 214. 



Cabinet Government, in England, 
origin, 666-668. 

Cadiz (Gades), founded, 75 ; map 
after p. 108. 

Caelian (cse'li-au) Hill, map, p. 243. 

Caesar, Caius Julius, and Sulla, 334, 
338 ; in Gaul, 340 ; rupture with 
Pompey, 341 ff. ; five-year rule, 
343 ff. ; the hope of subject peo- 
ples, 346 ; constructive work, 346- 
349 ; murder, 350 ; character, 
350-351. 

"Caesar,'; a title, 370 ; see Tsar. 

Calais (kai-la'), 574, 621. 

Calendar, Egyptian, 34-35 ; Cae- 
sar's, 348. 

Caligula (ca-Ug'u-la), Emperor, 358. 

" Caliphs " (ca'liphs), 456. 

Calvin, John, 611-C13. 

Calvinism, 612-613 ; see divisions. 
Huguenots, Presbyterians. 

Campania (cam-pa'ni-a), map after 
p. 238. 

Campus Martius (mar'ti-ut,), map, 
243. 

Canal, Nile to Red Sea, 31, 44, 
70. 

Cannae (can'nfe). Battle of, 290. 

Canon Law, 496. 

Canossa (ca-nos'sa), Heniy IV at, 
527. 

Canterbury Tales, 560 ; quoted, see 
Chaucer. 

Capet (ka-pa'), Hugh, 522. 

Capetians (ca-pe'ti-ans), 522 ff. 

Capitoline, the, map, p. 243. 

Capitularies (ca-pit-ti-la'ries), Char- 
lemagne's, 464. 

Cappadocians (cap-pa-do'ci-ans), 
71 ; map after 66. 

Capua (cap'u-a), destroyed by 
Rome, 293 ; map after p. 238. 

Cardinals, College of, 497 . 



16 



INDEX 



Carians (ca'ri-ans), mapafterp. 66. 
Carolingians (car-o-liu'ij;i-ans), de- 
generate, 469 ; term explained, 

522. 
Carpentry, in ancient Crete, 88. 
Carthage, Phoenician colony, 75 ; 

and Greeks in Sicily, 136, 149; 

and Rome, Punic Wars, 282 ff., 

character of rule, 283 ; ruin, 297- 

300 ; rebuilt by Caesar, 347 ; 

Vandal capital, 437 ; map after 

p. 108. 
Cassius (cash'ius), and Caesar, 349. 
Cassius, Spurius (spu'rius), 255. 
Castles, Feudal, 477-478. 
Catherine II, of Russia, 684, 691- 

692. 
Catherine of Aragon, 591, 616. 
Catherine of Medici (ma'de-che), 

631. 
Catholicism, see Church. 
Catiline (cat'I-line), 339. 
Cato, Marcus Fortius, 298, 321. 
Cato the Younger, 338, 344. 
Caudine (cau'dine) Forks, Battle of, 

262 ; map after 238. 
Cavalier Parliament, 663. 
Cavaliers, English, 657. 
Cavemen (Stone Age), 3-7. 
Celt, term explained, 471, note. 
Censors, Roman, 273. 
Centralization,- in government, term 

explained, 415. 
Centuries, Assembly of, Roman, 
• origin of, 249-250. 
Ceres (ce'reg), 101. 
Cerynea (cer-y-ne'a) , map after p. 

90. 
Chaeronea (ehter-o-ne'a). Battle of, 

211 ; map after p. 198. 
Chalcis (ehal'Qis), map after p. 108 ; 

Athenian, 123. 
Chaldea (-ehal'de-a) , map after 47 ; 



convenient but not strictly proper 
name for the Euphrates district ; 
see Babylon. 

Chalons (shal-lou). Battle of, 437 ; 
map after p. 364. 

Champlain, 670. 

Charlemagne (sharl'e-man), 461 ; 
wars, 462 ; union of Teutonic peo- 
ples, 462 ; and revival of Roman 
Empire in the West, 463 ; civiliza- 
tion in his age, 464 ; government, 
464 ; and learning, 465 ; place in 
history, 466. 

Charles Martel (mar-tel'), 452, 455. 

Charles the Bold, 587. 

Charles I, of England, 647-659. 

Charles II, 663-664. 

Charles VIII, of France and Italy, 
591. 

Charles IX, and the St. Bartholo- 
mew massacre, 631. 

Charles V, of Holy Roman Emjiire, 
inheritance, 591 ; power, 591-592 ; 
and Lutheranism, 607 ff. ; wars, 
609-610 ; abdication, 610. 

Charles XII, of Sweden, 684. 

Charms, Chaldean, 59. 

Chaucer, 560 ; quoted, 493. 

Cheops (€he'6ps), 26 ; see Khufu. 

Chersonesus (€her-so-ne'sus), map 
after 108. 

Chiefs, Council of, Homeric, 96- 
97. 

China, why not studied, 67, note ; 
trade with Roman Empire, 378. 

Chinvat (chin' vat) Bridge, the, 72. 

Chios (-ehi'os), 157 ; map after p. 81. 

Chivalry, 491-493. 

Christ, birth, 357, 404 ; crucifixion, 
358. 

' ' Christian Era, ' ' adopted for count- 
ing time, 459. 

Christianity, early beginnings, 404 ; 



INDEX 



17 



growth in first two centuries, 405- 
407 ; Nero's persecution, 361 ; 
some sources of power, 406-407 ; 
debt to the Empire, 407 ; and 
persecutions, 407-409 ; and Con- 
stantine, 415 ff. ; edict of Galerius, 
416; of Milan, 418-419; and 
Tlieodosius, 420 ; see Church. 

Church, the, see Christianity and 
Papacy; organization under the 
Empire, 442 ; growth of creeds, 
433 ; persecution by, 423 ; atti- 
tude toward pagan learning, 424- 
425 ; affected by Teutonic con- 
quests, 443 ; in Dark Ages, 494- 
499 ; see Papacy ; and the Refor- 
mation, which see ; Counter- 
reformation, 613-616 ; Jesuits, 
613 ; and religious wars, 627-636. 

Cicero, 338 ; "age of," 384. 

Cid, Song of the, 560. 

Cilicia (ci-lic'i-a), map after p. 66. 

Cimbri (cim'bri), the, 330. 

Cimon (ci'mon), 156, 159. 

Cincinnatus (cin-cin-na'tus), 278. 

Circuit Judges, in England, origin, 
612, 515. 

Cisalpine (cis-al'pine) Gaul, 237 ; 
becomes Roman, 287. 

Citeaux (si-to'), Abbey of, 417. 

City-states, in old Egypt, 20 ; in 
Euphrates valley, 49 ; in Hellas, 
— the limit of Greek political 
ideals, 95-96 ; decline and fall, 
207-208 ; approach to, in Middle 
Ages, 551 ; failure, 552. 

Cities, see Towns. 

Civil Service, term defined, 167. 

Claudius (claud'i-us), Emperor, 358. 

Clazomenae (cla-zom'e-nte), map 
after p. 108. 

Cleomenes (cle-om'e-neg), at Sparta, 
227, 



Cleon (cle'on), Athenian, 199. 

Cleopatra (cle-o-pa'tra), 344, 352, 
364. 

Clermont, Council at, 537. 

Cleruchs (cler'u^lis), 123, 163. 

Cliff caves, and prehistoric remains, 
3-6. 

Clisthenes (clis'the-neg), reforms, 
122, 123, 124-126. 

Clive, Robert, 688. 

Cloaca Maxima (clo-a'cix max'i-ma), 
the, 244, 245. 

Clovis (clo'vis), 451. 

Cnidus (cni'dus), map after 198. 

Coinage, see Money. 

Coke, Sir Edward, 653. 

Colbert (kol-ber'}, 677. 

Colchis (col'-ehis), map after p. 108, 

Coligny (ko-len-ye'), 631. 

Colline (col'line) Gate, Battle of, 
334 ; map, 243. 

Cologne (ko-lon'), map after p. 
364. 

Coloni (co-lo'ni), see Serfdom. 

Colonization, Phoenician, 75 ; Greek, 
108 ; Athenian advance in, 123 ; 
Roman, 265 ; French and I<]ng- 
lish, 669-676. 

Colosseum, tlie, 362, 364. 

Columbus, Christopher, and Amer- 
ica, 603. 

Column, in architectia-e, Egyptian, 
35; Greek, 110-111. 

Combat, Trial by, 444, 513. 

Commerce, early routes, Egyptian, 
30-31 ; of Euphrates States, 54 ; ' 
Phoenician, 74 ; and invention of 
coinage, 65 ; early Cretan, 82, 
107-109 ; and Greek geography, 
131, 133 ; in Homeric Greece, 99 ; 
Athenian, 189-190 ; in Graeco- 
Oriental World, 215-217 ; Roman, 
278, 373-376 ; growth in Europe 



18 



INDEX 



after Crusades, 541-542 ; and the 
rise of towns, 544. 

Commodus (com'mo-dus). Emperor, 
369. 

"Companions,'" Teutonic institu- 
tion of, 434. 

Compurgation (com-pur-ga'tion) , 
Trial by, 443. 

Common Law, the English, 512. 

Commons, House of, origin, 520-521. 

Compass, the Mariners', invention 
of, 560. 

Condottieri (con-dot-ti-er'i), 598. 

Constance, Council of, 580 ; Peace 
of, 529. 

Constantine, Emperor, and Chris- 
tianity, 415-420 ; and tlie Nicene 
Creed, 423. 

Constantine IV, and repulse of Sara- 
cens, 455. 

Constantine VI, 463. 

Constantine Palaeologus (pa-lse-o'- 
lo-giis), 583. 

Constantine the African, 556. 

Constantinople, map after p. 364 ; 
founded, 418 ; capital of Greek 
Empire, 442 ; repels Saracens, 
455 ; patriarchate of, 457 ; civili- 
zation of, in Middle Ages, 535 ; 
threatened by Turks, 536 ; cap- 
tured, 583. 

Constitution, term explained, 121 . 

Consuls, Roman, 251. 

Copernicus (co-per'ni-cus), 636. 

Copper, Age of, in old Egypt, 12-13. 

Corcyra (cor-cy'ra), map after p. 108. 

Cordova (cor'do-va), map after p. 
364. 

Corinna (co-rin'na), Boeotian poet- 
ess of Pindar's time. 
Corinth, and Peloponnesian War, 
195 ; Congress of, under Philip, 
211 ; and Achaean Confederacy, 



225 ; destroyed by Rome, 305 ; 
rebuilt by Caesar, 347 ; sacked by 
Goths, 400 ; map after p. 90. 

Corinthian Order of Architecture, 
111, 382. 

Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, 
323. 

Corporation, term explained, 232. 

Council of Blood, Alva's, 628. 

Correggio (kor-ed'jo), 597. 

Counter-Reformation, the, 613-615. 

Covenanters, Scottish, 654. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, 617, 620. 

Crassus, 337, 339. 

Crecy (kres'si). Battle of, 565 ; map 
after p. .522 . 

Cretan civilization, ancient, 83 ff. ; 
discoveries at Knossus, 85-86. 

Crito (Cri'to), and Socrates, 177. 

Croesus (crce'sus), 65, 67, 135. 

Crotona (cro-to'na), in Italy, map 
after 108. 

Cuneiform script, 56-58. 

Crusades, conditions, 533-536 ; mo- 
tives, 537 ; story of, '537-542 ; 
Latin States in Syria, 539 ; decline 
and why, 542 ; results, 543 ff. 

Curials (cu'ri-als), Roman, 427-428. 

Curio, Manius, 277. 

Curule of&ces, 273. 

Cynic philosophy, 232. 

Cynoscephalae (cy-nos-ceph'a-lee). 
Battle of, 301 ; map after 288. 

Cyrene (cy-re'ne) , map after p. 108. 

Cyrus "the Great," 66. 

Cyrus the Younger, 203, 204. 

Dacia (da'cia), 365, map after p. 364. 
Damascus (da-mas'cus), map after 

p. 364. 
Danelaw (dane'law) (or Danelagh), 

472, 475 ; map, p. 474. 
Dante (dan'ie), 560. 



INDEX 



19 



Darius Codomannus (da-ri'us c6d- 

o-man'nus), and Alexander, 213- 

214. 
Darius the Organizer, 68-70. 
"Dark Ages," the, 441 ff. 
Dates, Tables of, 236, 353, 398, 431, 

467, 532, 592, 638, 694. 
David, King of the Hebrews, 79. 
Debt, laws about, in Athens, 115- 

119 ; in early Rome, 253-254. 
Decarchies (dec'ar^h-ies), under 

Sparta, 202. 
Decemvirs (de-cCm'vh-s) , Roman, 

257. 
Delos (de'los). Confederacy of , 155- 

166 ; plan of house from, 185 ; 

island, map after p. 81. 
Delphi, 105 ; repulse of Gauls from, 

219 ; map after p. 81. 
Delphic Oracle, 105. 
"Demagogues," in Athens, term 

explained, 164. 
Demes (denies), in Attica, 124. 
Democracy, term defined, 96 ; germs 

of, in Homeric Greece, 97 ; tyrants 

pave way for, 114-115 ; Athens a 

democracy, 119-120, 125, 164-166; 

in Republican Rome in form, 274 ; 

among early Teutons, 433 
Demosthenes (de-mos'the-neg), ora- 
tor, 173-174, 210. 
Denmark, Empire in 11th century, 

501 ; to French Revolution, 586. 
Diaz (de-a.s'), and geographical dis- 
covery, 602. 
Dictator, Roman, 252. 
Diet, German, in Middle Ages, 608, 

note. 
Diocese (di'o-cese), civil, 414; table 

of, 414 ; ecclesiastical. 496. 
Diocletian (dl-o-cle'ti-an). Emperor, 

412-415 ; edict regarding prices, 

429. 



Diogenes (di-6g'e-nes), the cynic, 

232. 
Dionysus (di-o-ny'sus), god of the 

vintage and the drama, 122 ; 

theater of, at Athens, 173. 
" Divine Right," theory of kingship, 

645. 
Domesday (domes'day) Book, 507. 
Domestication of animals, prehis- 
toric, 6, 8, 9, 15; in ancient Egypt, 

30. 
Dominicans (do-min'i-cans), 552, 

553. 
Domitian, Emperor, 364. 
' ' Donation of Pippin, " 4G0. 
" Do-Nothing Kings," the, 451. 
Dorians, 103. 

Doric Order, of architecture. 111. 
Drachma (dra^h'mii), the, 120. 
Draco (dra'co), laws of, 118. 
Drainage systems, in Babylonia, 49; 

in ancient Crete, 83, 85. 
Drake, Sir Francis, 624, 673. 
Drama, Greek, 171-173 ; in Graeco- 

Oriental World, 216; Elizabethan, 

626. 
Dress, Egyptian, see illustrations, 

pp. 24, 25 ; Cretan, 85, 87 ; Greek, 

188 ; Roman, 279. 
Drusus (drii'sus), rival of Gracchvis, 

327 ; champion of the ItaUans, 

331. 
Duns the Scot, 559. 
Dupleix (dii-plfi'), 687, 688. 
Dutch Republic, the, see Nether- 
lands and Holland ; independence 

recognized, 635. 

East Anglia, map, 474. 
East Goths, 438. 

Eastern Empire, see Greek Em- 
pire. 
Ebro (e'bro), nuip after p. 288. 



20 



INDEX 



Ecbatana (ec-ba-tan'a), map after 
p. 214. 

Economic conditions, term defined, 
119 ; in Egypt, 21-22, 29-32 ; in 
Chaklea, 54-55 ; in Homeric 
Greece, 97-99 ; in Atliens at 660 
B.C., 115-117 ; in Sparta, 127; 
Solon's reforms at Athens, 119; 
in age of Pericles, 188-190 ; re- 
action of Oriental conquests upon 
Greece in 217, 219 ; in late Sparta, 
202, 227 ; early Roman, 242, 277 ; 
after Punic Wars, 314-317 ; re- 
forms of the Gracchi, 322-327 ; 
Caesar's attempts at reform, 347- 
348 ; in Early Empire, 372-379 ; 
decline in 3d century, 401 ; in 
4th century, 425-431 ; in 7th, 
445 ff. ; in Charlemagne's Empire, 
464 ; in Feudal Age, 480, 484-488. 

Education and learning, in Egypt, 
22, 32-35 ; in Chaldea, 57 ; in 
Sparta, 128 ; in Athens, 192-194 ; 
under Roman Empire, 382-384 ; 
"in Dark Ages" in monasteries, 
448 ; and Charlemagne, 465 ; and 
Alfred the Great, 473 ; in 11th 
century, 554 ff . ; see Universities ; 
in Renaissance Age, 597 ; see 
Scientific method and Humanism. 

Edward I, of England, and judici- 
ary, 515 ; and parliament, 519- 
520. 

Edward II, deposed, 565. 

Edward III, 565 ff. 

Edward VI, and the Reformation, 
620. 

Edward the Confessor, 501. 

Egbert, of Wessex, 472. 

Egypt, early home of metals, 12-13 ; 
land and people, 17-26 ; and the 
Nile, 17, 18 ; map, 18 ; life of the 
wealthy, 23-24 ; of the poor, 25- 



26 ; art and industry, 26-37 ; pyr- 
amids, 26-27 ; irrigation system, 
28-29 ; agriculture, 29-30 ; trade 
(barter), 30-31 ; artisans, 31-32 ; 
books and writing, 32-34 ; sci- 
ence, 34-35 ; sculpture, 35-36 ; 
religion and character, 37-41 ; 
and relation to other lands, 41 ff. ; 
political story, 42-45 ; under the 
Ptolemies, 218 ff., 220-222; 
Alexandrian Age, 229-235 ; see 
Borne; conquered by Saracens, 
4.54. 

Einhard (In'hart), 461. 

Elbe (el'be), map after p. 364. 

Electoral College, of the Holy 
Roman Empire, 608. 

Elgin marbles, 171. 

Eliot, Sir John, 647-648, 651-652. 

Elis (e'lis), map after p. 90. 

Elizabeth, of England, 616, 621- 
626 ; and Holland, 629. 

Empire, term explained, 49, note. 

England, see Britain ; Norman 
Conquest, 501-504 ; Saxon local 
institutions, 504; Norman cen- 
tralization and organization, 505- 
506 ; Norman kings, 507-509 ; 
anarchy under Stephen, 509 ; 
Henry II, 509 ff. ; growth of Com- 
mon Law, 512 ; jury trial, 513; 
Henry and Grand Council, 518 ; 
Richard I, 516 ; and John, 516 ; 
Magna Carta, 516-517 ; under 
Henry HI, 517 ff. ; Edward I and 
Parliament, 518-520 ; and Hun- 
dred Years' War, 565 ff. ; Black 
Death, 566 ; disappearance of 
villeinage, 566 ff. ; peasant rising 
of 1381, 567-571 ; Pariiament 
under Lancastrians, 571-573 ; 
Wars of Roses, 575 ; " New Mon- 
archy " of the Tudors, 575-576; 



INDEX 



21 



the Reformation in, 616-626 ; 
under Elizabeth, 621-626 ; and 
Catholic Europe, 624 ; tlie Ar- 
mada, 624-625 ; industrial con- 
ditions in 1600, 639-642 ; and 
Piuitanism, 643-644 ; and Divine 
Right, 645 ff. ; and early Stuarts, 
645-659 ; Petition of Right, 650- 
651;' "No Parliament" period, 
652-653 ; Long Parliament, 654 
ff. ; Civil War, 657-659 ; Com- 
monwealth, 659-660 ; Protecto- 
rate, 661 ; Restoration, 661-664 ; 
Revolution of 1688, 664 ff. ; re- 
sults, ministerial government, 
666-668; in 18th century, 667- 
668 ; expansion into new worlds, 
669-676 ; and 18th century wars, 
679-680, 686-690 ;. loss of Amer- 
ica, 690-691. 

English language, growth of, 560. 

Epaminondas (e-pam-i-nun'das), 
205-207. 

Ephesus (eph'e-sus), map after p. 
81. 

Epic poetry, term explained. 111. 

Epictetus (ep-ic-te'tus) , slave phil- 
osopher, 384. 

Epicureanism (ep-i-cii-re'an-ism) , 
231. 

Epicurus (ep-i-cii'rus), 231. 

Epirus (e-pi'rus), map after p. 81. 

Equites (ek'wi-teg), Roman, 308. 

Erasmus (e-ras'mas), 599; and 
Luther, 604. 

Eratosthenes (er-a-tos'the-neg) , 
keeper of Alexandrian Library, 
234. 

Erechtheum (e-rech'the-um), 197, 
and plan, 168. 

Eretria (e-re'tri-a), map after p. 90. 

Esquiline (es'qui-line), map, p. 243. 

Estate, political term, 520, note. 



Estates General, French, 523-524, 

579. 
Ethiopia (e-thi-o'pi-a), map, p. 18. 
Etruria (e-trii'ri-a), map after p. 

238, and on 242. 
Etruscans (e-trus'cans), 238-239. 
Euboea (eu-boe'a), 123 ; map after 

p. 81. 
Euclid (eu'clid), 233, 234. 
Euphrates (eu-phra'te^), 42, 46 ; 

map 50 and after 65. 
Euripides (eu-rip'i-de§), 172, 216. 
Euxine (eux'ine), the, a name for 

the Black Sea. 
Evesham (eves'ham). Battle of, 519. 
Exarchate of Ravenna (ex-areh'ate 

of ra-ven'na) , 438, 460 ; map after 

p. 364. 
Exchequer (ex-cheq'uer), Court of, 

515. 
Excommunication ( ex-ci )iu-n i u-ni- 

ca'tion), 498. 
Experiment, method of, not known 

to Greeks, 180 ; discovery in 

17th century, 637-638. 
Ezekiel, on Tyre, 75. 

Fabian (fa'bl-an) policy, see Fablus. 

Fabius (fa'bi-us) (Q. Fabius ]\Iaxi- 
mus), 289. 

Factories, in Athens, 189 ; in cities 
of Roman Empire, 373. 

Fairs, in Middle Ages, 545 and note. 

Falconry, 489, 490. 

Falkland, Lord, 655. 

Ferdinand of Aragon, 582-583, 591. 

Feudalism, causes, 476, 477 ; castles, 
477, 478 ; armor, 479 ; origin of 
classes and of privileges, 476 ; de,- 
centralization, 480 ; economic 
causes, 480 ; good side of, 483 ; 
homage, 481 ; lords and vassals, 
481 ; private wars, 483 ; and the 



22 



INDEX 



workers, 484 ff. ; life of the fight- 
ers, 488 ff. ; undermined by Cru- 
sades, 542 ; decline in England 
after Wars of Roses, 575 ; see 
Chivalry. 

Finland (fin'land), Swedish, 55, 
635 ; part seized by Eussia under 
Peter, 684. 

Fire-making, 5, 14-15. 

Fist-hatchets, of Stone Age, 3. 

Flavian (iia'vi-an) Caesars, 361, 
note. 

Foch (f5sh), Ferdinand, 1. 

Fortescue (for' Its-cue), Sir John, 
573, 639. 

Forum (fo'rum), the Roman, origin, 
243 ; map, 243 ; Caesar's, 348. 

France, and Treaty of Verdun, 468 ; 
rise of Capetians, 522 ; growth of 
territory and of royal power, 523 
ff. ; and Hundred Years' War, 
565, 573-575 ; absolutism, 575 ; 
leadership under Francis I, 575; 
and Italian claims, 531, 591; ex- 
pansion toward Rhine, at expense 
of Empire, 610, 635; religious 
wars in, 631-633; under Henry 
IV, 632; under RicheUeu, 633; 
and Thirty Years' War, 633, 634; 
gains in, 635; in America, 670- 
673; under Louis XIV, 677-680; 
seizure of territory, 678; revoca- 
tion of Edict of Nantes, 678-679 ; 
intellectual leadership, 680; and 
wars of Frederick II, 686-690. 

Francis I, of France, 591. 

Francis, Saint, 552. 

Franciscans (fran-cis'cans), 552. 

Franks, 436; preeminence among 
Teutonic conquerors, 451 ff. ; Clo- 
vis and Frankish Empire, 451; 
empire in 7th century, 452 ; in 8th 
century, 455, 456; and Charle- 



magne (which see) ; maps after 

436, 451. 
Frederick I (Barbarossa) , of Holy 

Roman Empire, 528-529. 
Frederick II, of Holy Roman Em- 
pire, and the Popes, 530-531; and 

universities, 557. 
Frederick I, of Prussia, 686. 
Frederick II, 686-693. 
Frederick the Wise, 605, 608. 
Frederick William (Great Elector), 

685. 
Frederick William I, of Prussia, 

686. 
Freya (fra'ya), 433. 
Frieze (frieze), in architecture, 110. 
Friars, 552-553. 
Froissart (f roiss'art) , on John Ball, 

568-569. 

Gades (ga'dej) (Cadiz), Phoenician 
colony, 75; map after 108. 

Galatia (ga-la'ti-a), 220; map after 
p. 364. 

Gallerius (ga-le'ri-us). Emperor, 
and edict of toleration, 416. 

Galileo (gal-i-le'o), 637. 

Gauls, invasion of Greek Orient, 
219; in Italy, 238. 

Gelon (ge'lon), 137. 

' ' Generation, " a, as measure of 
time, explained, 66. 

Genghis Kahn (jen'gts kan), 681. 

Gens (gens) (Greek or Roman clan), 
95. 

Geography, and history, in Egypt, 
17-20; in Chaldea, 46-47; in Hel- 
las, 130-134; in Italy and with 
Rome, 237-238, 244. 

Geometry, Egyptian, 34; Chaldean, 
59; Greek, 134; Saracenic, 535. 

Georges, the, of England, and minis- 
terial government, 667, 668. 



INDEX 



23 



Geographical discoveries, at close of 
Middle Ages, 601-603. 

German Diet, see Diet. 

' ' German, ' ' caution as to term, 
450. 

Germany, see Teutons; and Treaty 
of Verdun, 468; expansion into 
Slav East, 524; and Otto I, 524- 
525; and Holy Eonian Empire, 
526 ff.; decline of German king- 
ship, 531; Reformation in, 604- 
GIO; and Thirty Years' War, 633- 
636; see Prussia. 

Gibraltar (gi-bral'ter), map after 
p. 108. 

Gilds (gilds), Roman, 278; medie- 
val, 549-550; model for university 
organization, 556. 

Giorgione (jor-jo'ne), 597. 

Giotto (jot'to), 597. 

Gladiators, 389. 

"Good Parliament," the, 572. 

Goshen (gosh'en). Land of, 77. 

Goths, see East Goths and West 
Goths. 

Gothic architecture, 562-563. 

Gracchus, Caius (grac'chus, cai'us), 
32.5-326. 

Gracchus, Tiberius, 323-325. 

Graeco-Oriental (gra'co) World, 
the, 215 ff.; mingling of East and 
West, 215; Hellenism of the active 
element, 215; the many Alexan- 
drias in, 215; Wars of the Suc- 
cession, 218; 3d century in, 218 
ff. ; resemblance to modern Eu- 
rope, 219; Gallic invasion, 219- 
220; some separate states, 218, 
220-221 ; society and culture, 229- 
236; see Achaean League. 

Granicus (gra-ni'cus), Battle of, 213; 
map after p. 214. 

Grand Jury, origin, 513. 



Greek Church, the, separation from 
Latin, 458-459. 

Greek Empire (or Eastern Empire), 
438; kept part of Italy, 438, 439; 
Justinian and, 438 ff. ; repels Sara- 
cens in 8th century, 455; in time 
of ■ Charlemagne, 463;' in 12th 
century, 535-536; threatened by 
Turks, 536; and Crusades, 536 ff.; 
overthrown by Turks, 583. 

Greek fire, 455, note. 

Greek language, recovery of, in clos- 
ing Middle Ages, 596-597. 

Greek philosophy, 6th century, 112- 
113; in Age of. Pericles, 174-177; 
in Alexandrian Age, 230-231. 

Greek religion, 100-101, 113; moral 
side, 181-182. 

Greek home life, in Age of Pericles, 
184-192. 

Greeks, the, and geography, 130- 
134 ; rediscovery of prehistoric 
culture, 84 ff. ; Cretan, 85-88 ; 
Achaean, 91 ff . ; city state, 95-96 ; 
Homeric society, 96-192 ; religion, 
100-101 ; Dorian conquest, 103 ff . ; 

• 1100-600 B.C., 103-129 ; unity of 
feeling, 104-107 ; expansion by 
colonization, 108 ; disappearance 
of Homeric kingship, 113 ; art 
and philosophy of 6th century, 
109-113 ; ' ' Age of Tyrants, "114- 
115 ; rise of democracy at Athens, 
115-120 ; Spartan training and 
military leadership, 126-129 ; ge- 
ography, and contrast with Ori- 
ental States, 130-134 ; Persian 
Wars, which see ; Athenian lead- 
ership, see Athens; Spartan 
leadership, see Sparta ; Theban 
leadership, 207 ; Macedonian con- 
quest, 210-211 ; failure of city 
state, 207-208 ; in the ( )rient \vith 



24 



INDEX 



Alexander and after, 212 ff. ; see 
Graeco- Oriental World; Alexan- 
drian Age, 229-236 ; Magna Grae- 
cia falls to Rome, 263 ; Greece 
falls to Rome, 302-305 ; Alaric in 
Greece, 435 ; contributions to 
civilization, 235-236. 

Gregory the Great, Pope, and Eng- 
land, 473. 

Gregory VII, Pope (Hildebrand), 
526-528. 

Grindecobbe (grinde'cob&e), English 
peasant patriot, 571. 

Guiscard (ges-car'), Robert, 556 and 
note. 

Gunpowder, invention of, and early 
use, 567 ; later improvements, 600. 

Gustavus Adolphus, and Thirty 
Years' War, 634. 

Gustavus Vasa, 586. 

Gutenberg (goot'en-bero), John, 
600. 

Habeas Corpus, 663. 

Hadrian, Emperor, 366-368 ; Pope, 

and adoption of the "Christian 

Era," 4.59. 
Hadrian's Wall, 366-367 ; map after 

p. 364. 
Halicarnassus (lial-i-car-nas'si;s) , 

112 ; map after p. 81. 
Halys (ha'lys) River, map after p. 

214. 
Hamilcar Barca (ha-mil'car bar'ca), 

286, 288. 
Hammurapi (ham-mii-ra'pi), of 

Babylon, 49 ; laws of, 54-55. 
Hampden, John, 650, 652. 
Hanging Gardens, at Babylon, 61. 
Hannibal (han'ni-bal), 288-294, 297, 

298. 
Hanseatic (han-se-at'ic) League, 

551 and map opp. 



Hapsburg (haps'biiro), Rudolph of, 
581. 

Hapsburgs, Spanish and Austrian, 
610. 

Harold, the Saxon, 501-504. 

Harold Hardrada (har'dra-da), 502. 

Harvey, William, and discovery of 
cii'culation of the blood, 612, 624. 

Hasdrubal (has'dru-bal), the Bar- 
cide, 293-204. 

Hastings, Battle of, 503. 

Hebrews, 76 ff. ; age of patriarchs, 
76-78 ; Egyptian captivity, 77 ; 
settlement in Palestine, 78 ; the 
Judges, 78 ; Kings and Prophets, 
79 ; David and Solonion, 79 ; di- 
vision and decline, 80 ; Assyrian 
captivity, 50, 80 ; repulse of Sen- 
nacherib, 50 ; Babylonian captiv- 
ity, 52 ; return to Palestine, 80 ; 
priestly rule, 80 ; mission, 80, 81 ; 
dependent state, 363 ; the Macca- 
bees, 303 ; province of Roman 
Empire, 363 ; destruction and 
dispersion, 363-364. 

Hegira (he-gi'ra), the, 454. 

Hellas (hel'las), 130. 

Hellen (hel'len), mythical ancestor 
of Hellenes, 105. 

Hellenes (hel'enz), term ex- 
plained, 105, 130. 

Hellenism and Hellenistic, terms 
compared, 218, note. 

Hellespont (hel'es-pont), the, 143; 
map after p. 108. 

Helot (he'lot), 127. 

Helvetii (hel-ve'ti-i) , 340. 

Henry I, of England, 508. 

Henry II, 509-515. 

Henry III, 516. 

Henry IV, 570, 572. 

Henry V, 570, 573. 

Henry VI, 575. 



INDEX 



25 



Henry VII, 575. 

Henry VIII, 617-619. 

Henry IV, of France, 632-633. 

Henry IV, of Holy Roman Empire, 

526-528. 
Henry the Navigator, 602. 
Hephaestus (he-ph^ts'tus), 101. 
Hera (he'ra), 100. 
Heracleitus (her-a-clei'tus), Gree~k 

philosopher, 112. 
Herat (her'at), 215. 
Herculaneum ( her-cu-la' ne-um ) , 364. 
Hermann (her'mann), Teutonic 

chieftain, 387. 
Hermes (her'niej), 100. 
Hermits, Christian, 447. 
Herodotus (he-rod'o-tus), in Egypt, 

27 ; place in literature, 174. 
Hesiod (he'si-od), 112. 
Hiero (hi'e-ro) II, 284, 285, 287. 
Hieroglyphics (hi-er-o-glyph'ics), 

Egyptian, 32, 35 ; Chaldean, 56. 
Hildebrand, papal counselor, 526 ; 

see Gregory VI. 
Himera (him'e-ra), Battle of, 149; 

map after p. 108. 
Hipparchus (hip-par'-ehus), philoso- 
pher, 234. 
Hipparchus, tyrant, 122. 
Hippias (hip'pi-as), tyrant, 122-123, 

137. 
Hiram, of Tyre, and Solomon, 79. 
History, defined, 2-3 ; divisions, 

465, note. 
Hittites (hit'tites), 44 ; maps, 50, 

78. 
Hohenstauf en (ho-hen-stauf 'en) , 

the, 528 ff. 
Hohenzollerns (ho-hen-zoll'erns) , 

685. 
Holland, see Netherlands ; separate 

state, 629 ; wins wealth during 

war with Spain, 630 ; .colonial em- 



pire, 630; and Louis XIV, 678- 
679. 

Holy Roman Empire, see Charle- 
magne, 463 ; revival of Roman 
Empire in the West by Otto, 525 ; 
effect on Germany and on Italy, 
526 ff. ; history to 1254, 526-531 ; 
and the Hapsburgs, 581-582. 

Homage, 481. 

Homeric poems, 91-92 ; reduced to 
writing, 122. 

Honorius (ho-no'ri-us), 421. 

Hoplites (hop'lites), and political 
power in Athens, 116. 

Horace, Latin poet, 316, 384. 

Hostilius, Tullus (hos-til'i-us, tul'- 
lus), 240. 

Houses, first wooden. Lake Dwell- 
ers, 11 ; Egyptian, 23-25 ; in 
primitive Aegean civilization, 82 ; 
in Age of Pericles, 184-186 ; early 
Roman, 245 ; Roman about 200 
B.C., 279 ; after Punic Wars, 300, 
311 ; in feudal age, 485, and see 
Castles. 

Huguenots (hu'gue-nots), 616, 
631 ff. ; and Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, 632 ; and Henry of 
Navarre, 632-633 ; Edict of 
Nantes, 632 ; and Richelieu, 633 ; 
and Louis XIA^ 678-679 ; fugi- 
tives in England and America, 
679, note. 

Humanists, in education, 596-597. 

Hundred Years' War, the, see Eng- 
land. 

Hungarians, nomad raids, 469 ; 
checked by Otto, 524 ; see Hun- 
gary. 

Hungary, see Hungarians ; and the 
Turks, 583 ; a Hapsburg province, 
610. 

Huns, 435, 436, 437. 



26 



INDEX 



Hus, John, 580. 

Hyksos (hyk'sos), the, 42. 

Hymettus (hy-met'tus), 122; map, 

p. 147. 
Hyphasis (liy'plia-sis) River, map 

after p. 214. 

Iconoclastic (i-con-o-clas'tic) dis- 
pute, the, 458. 

Iliad (il'i-ad), the, 91. 

Ilium (il'i-um), see Troy. 

lUyria (il-lyr'i-a), maps after 90, 
238. 

Imbros (im'brOs) , map after p. 108. 

Immortality, behef in, prehistoric 
man, 7 ; Egyptian, 38-40 ; Per- 
sian, 72-73 ; Greek, 90, 101 ; and 
Socrates, 176-177. 

Imperator (im-per-a'tor) , title 
adopted by the Caesars, 345. 

Inclosures, in England in Tudor 
period, 640-642. 

India, why not studied, 67, note ; 
and Persian Empire, 67 ; and 
Alexander, 214, 217 ; an English 
dependency, 688. 

Indulgences, 605-607. 

"Infantry," original meaning of, 
480. 

Innocent III, Pope, 530 ; and the 
Friar reform, 552 ; and Albi- 
genses. 

Inquisition, the, 614-615. 

Interdict, the, 498. 

Investiture strife, the, 526 ff. 

Ionia (i-o'ni-a), colonized by Greeks, 
104 ; early center of art and phi- 
losophy, 112 ; Persian conquest, 
135 ; revolt, 136 ; Persian War 
in, after Plataea, 153-155 ; calls 
Athens to leadership, 155 ; be- 
trayed to Persia by Sparta, 200 ; 
map after p. 108. 



lonians, Greek race, mythical ori- 
gin, 105 ; driven from Peloponne- 
sus by Dorians, 104 ; colonization 
of Ionia, 104. 

Ionic order, in architecture, 111. 

Iran (e-ran'), Plateau of, 66 ; map 
after p. 66. 

Ireland, schools in Dark Ages, 554 ; 

' and England, Henry II, 510 ; and 

Elizabeth, 625 ; Catholicism and 

patriotism, 626 ; and Cromwell, 

661, 668. 

Irene (i-rene'). Empress, 458, 463. 

Irnerius (ir-ne'ri-us), 656. 

Iron, l^nown early to Ilittites, 44 ; 
to Achaeans, 91. 

Irrigation, in Egypt, 19-20, 28-29. 

Isabella of Castile, 582, 603. 

Iskandar (is-kan-dar'), map after 
p. 214. 

Israel, Kingdom of, 80 ; see He- 
brews ; map, p. 78. 

Issus (is'sus), Battle of, 213 ; map 
after p. 214. 

Italy, map after p. 238 ; Greek colo- 
nies in, see Magna Graecia; land 
and peoples, 237-239 and map, 
p. 239 ; see Rome, Goths, Lom- 
bards; divided between Teutons 
and Empire, 438-439 ; see Papacy, 
Franks; and Holy Eoman Em- 
pire, 525 ff. ; in fragments in 13th 
century, 531 ; struggle for, be- 
tween France and Spain, 531, 591, 
see Renaissance. 

Itinerant justices, in England, 512, 
515. 

lulus (i-u'lus), 338. 

Ivan (e'van) the Terrible, 682. 

Ivry, Battle of, 632. 

Jacob, 76. 

Jacquerie (zliak-re'), 570, note. 



INDEX 



27 



James I, of England, and Divine 
Right, 645 ff. 

James II, 664-665. 

Janiculum (ja-nic'u-lum), Mount, 
244 ; map, p. 239. 

Janissaries (jan'is-sa-ries), 584. 

Janus (ja'nus), 245, 246 ; gates of 
temple closed by Augustus, 354. 

Japan, medieval rumors of, in Eu- 
rope, 601. 

Jaxartes (jax-ar'tej), the, 536 ; map 
after p. 214. 

Jephthah (jeph'thah), 78. 

Jerusalem, and Sennacherib, 50, 
note ; and Nebuchadnezzar, • 52, 
80 ; after the return from Captiv- 
ity, 80 ; destruction by Titus, 

363 ; patriarchate of, 422 ; be- 
comes Mohammedan, 454 ; in 
Crusades, 538, 540 ; maps after 

364 and on p. 78. 
Jesuits, 613. 
Jews, see Hebreios. 

Joan (jon) of Arc, 573-574. 

Joseph II, of Austria, 693-694. 

Joseph, the Hebrew, 76-77. 

Josephus (jo-se'phus), 384. 

Joshua, 78. 

John, of England, 516. 

Joinville (Fr. zhwan-vel'), quoted, 

484; on Crusades, 541-542. 
Judah, Kingdom of, 80; map, p. 

78. 
Judges, the Hebrew, 78. 
Jugglers, medieval, 488, 489. 
Jugurtha (jii-gurth'a), 329, 330. 
Julian, the Apostate, 419-420. 
Juno (jii'no), 100. 
Jupiter, 100, 246. 
Jury, the Athenian, 166. 
Jury, the modern system of trial by, 

512-513. 
Jury, Grand, 513. 



Justinian (jus-tin 'i-an) the Great, 

438-440. 
Justinian Code, the, 439-440. 
Jutes (jiltes), the, in Britain, 471. 
Juvenal (jii'ven-al), 311. 

Kalmar (kal'mar), Union of, 586. 
Kandahar (kan-da-hiir'), 215; map 

after p. 214. 
Karnak (kar'nak), temple at, 36; 

map, p. 18. 
Khufu(kMi'fu), 26. 
King William's War, 665, 679. 
'King's Bench, Court of, 515. 
Kitchen utensils in ancient Crete, 

87, 88. 
Knighthood, 491-493. 
Knights of St. John, 539. 
Knights Templar, 540. 
Knights, Teutonic, 540; in eastern 

Europe, ib., and map after 550. 
Knossos (knos'sos). Palace of, 83- 

86; map after p. 41. 
Knox, John, 625. 
Knut the Great, 501. 
Koran (ko-ran'), the, 453. 
Kosciusko (kos-ci-us'ko), 691. 
Kossova (kos-so'va). Battle of, 583; 

map after p. 582. 
Kyffhauser (kyff'haus-er) Mountain, 

529. 

Labor, see Agriculture, Slavery, 
Serfdom, Gilds. 

Lacedaemonians (lac-e-dS-mo'ni- 
ans), see Sparta. 

Laconia (la^co'ni-a), classes of Spar- 
tan subjects, 126-127; map, p. 
126. 

Lake Dwellers, prehi.storic, 11, 12. 

Lancastrians, table of, p. 570; 
growth of Parliament under, 671- 
573. 



28 



INDEX 



Langton, Stephen, 516. 
Languedoc (lan-gue-doc'), 614. 
Laocoon (la-oc'o-on), statue of the, 

230. 
La Salle (saUe), 670, 671. 
Latin colonies, 267, 268. 
Latin language, in Middle Ages, 524 

ff. 
Latin states in Syria, in Crusades, 

539 
Latins, 242, and map, 239. 
Latin War, the, of, 338, 262. 
Latium (la'ti-um), map after p. 238 

and on 242. 
Laud, Archbishop, 653, 655. 
Lawyers, rise of, 516, 558. 
Lebanon Mountains, map on p. 78. 
Lechfeld (leic'felt). Battle of, 524. 
Legion, the Roman, 271 ; and the 

Greek phalanx, 271 ; contest be- 
tween, 301-302. 
Legnano (la-nya'no) , Battle of, 529. 
Lemnos (lem'nos), map) after p. 
81. 

Leo III, and Charlemagne, 463. 
Leo X, Pope, 607. 
Leo the Isaurian, 455, 458. 
Leonardo (la-o-nar'do) da Vinci (da 

vin'che), -597. 
Leonidas (le-on'i-das), 145. 
Lesbos (les'bos), 157 ; map after p. 

81. 
Leuctra (leuc'tra), Battle of, and 

plan, 206 ; map after p. 90. 
Lewes, Battle of, 518. 
Leyden, Relief of, 628-629. 
Libations, in Greek worship, 100. 
Libraries, Babylonian, 57 ; in 

Graeco-(Jriental World, as at 

Alexandria, 232, 233. 
Licinian laws, the, 259, 260. 
Licinius (li-cin'i-us) , Emperor, 417, 

419. 



Ligurians (h-gii'ri-ans), map after 
p. 238 and on 239. 

Liris (li'ris), the, map after p. 238. 

Livy, 384 ; quoted, 254, 255. 

Locris (lo'cris), map after 90. 

Loire (Iwar), map after 522. 

Lollards, the, 568. 

Lombard League, the, 529. 

Lombards, 438 ; and the papacy, 
459 ; and the Franks, 460. 

Long Parliament, the, 654 ff. 

Lot, use of, in elections, 119-120. 

Lothair, Emperor, 468. 

Louis IX, of France, 523. 

Louis XI, 574-575. 

Louis XIV, 677-680. 

Louvre (loovr), art museum in mod- 
ern Paris. 

Loyola, Ignatius (lo-yo'la, ig-na'- 
ti-us), 613. 

Lucretius (lu-cre'ti-us) , 384. 

Luther, Martin, 604 ; and Indul- 
gencies, 605 ; theses, 606 ; and 
the pope, 607 ; burns papal bull, 
607 ; at Worms, 608 ; organizes 
Lutheran church, 608 ; and Zwin- 
gh, 610. 

Lutheran Church, 608. 

Lutzen (lllt'zen). Battle of, 634. 

Lycian Confederacy, 223, note. 

Lycurgus (ly-cur'gus), 126. 

Lydia (lyd'i-a), map after 65; and 
coinage, 65. 

Lydiadas (ly-di'a-das), 226. 

Lyons, map after p. 364. 

Lyric Age, 111-112. 

Lysander (ly-san'der), the Spartan, 
200. 

Maccabees (mac'ca-bees), the, 303. 

Macedonia (mac-e-do'ni-a), map 
after 81 ; under Theban influence, 
207 ; and PhiUp TI, 208 ff. ; ex- 



INDEX 



29 



pansion, map, 209 ; army, 209- 
210 ; conquest of Greece, 210 ; 
under Alexander, 212 ff. ; after 
Wars of the Succession, one of 
three Great Powers, 218 ; decline, 
228 ; and Achaean League, 228 ; 
and Rome, 291, 301-302, 304. 

Madgeburg (mag-'de-booro), 551. 

Maecenas (mae-ce'nas), 356. 

Maelius, Spurius (m^'li-us, Spti'- 
ri-us), 256. 

Magic, Chaldean, 62 ; Median, 71, 

Magism (magism) (Persian), 71. 

Magna Carta, 516-517. 

Magna Graecia, 108 ; map after p. 
108. 

Magnesia (mag-ne'si-a). Battle of, 
302 ; map after p. 288 

•Magnetic needle, and Roger Bacon, 
560. 

Mahomet (ma-hom'et) the Con- 
queror, 583. 

Malplaquet (mal-pla-ka'), Battle of, 
680. 

Manlius (man'li-us), Marcus, 256, 
261. 

Manor, feudal, 484-487. 

Mantinea (man-ti-ne'a) , broken into 
villages by Sparta, 205 ; restored 
by Epaminondas, 207 ; battle of, 
207 ; map after 81. 

Marathon, Battle of, 137, 138-140; 
map, p. 138, 147, and after 90. 

March of the Ten Thousand, 203- 
204. 

Marcellus (mar-cel'lus), 292. 

Mardonius (mar-do'ni-us) , 137, 149. 

Maria Theresa (T/ie-re-sa) , 686. 

Marius (ma'ri-us), 330-332. 

Marlborough, 679. 

Marston Moor, Battle of, 657. 

Martin V, Pope, 580. 

Mary of Burgundy, 587, 589. 



Mary Tudor, 620-621. 

Massilia (mas-sil'i-a), 108 ; map 

after 108. 
Massinissa (mas-sin-is'sa), 298. 
Matilda, of England, 508. 
Maximian (max-im'i-an). Emperor, 

412, 413, 414. 
Maximilian I, Emperor, 582, 589. 
Mayfields, 464-465. 
Mayors of the Palace, Prankish, 

451. 
Medes (medes), the, 66; map after 

64. 
Medieval history, defined, 465. 
Mediterranean Sea, importance of, 

133. 
Megalopolis (meg-a-16p'o-lis), 207 ; 

map after 90. 
Megara (meg'a-ra), map after 90 ; 

and Salamis, 118. 
Men-at-arms, 479. 
Menelaus (men-e-la'us), mythical 

king of Sparta. 
Menes (me'neg) , of Egypt, 20. 
Merovingians (mer-o-vin'ji-aus) , 

451. 
Mesopotamia (mes-o-po-ta'mi-a), 

46 ; map after 47. 
Messana (mes-sa'na), map, 284. 
Messene (mes-se'ne), map after 90. 
Messenia (mes-se'ni-a), map after 90- 
Metaurus (me-tau'rus). Battle of, 

294 ; map after 238. 
Metropolis (of a Greek colony ; 

mother city), 108. 
Metropolitan (met-ro-pol'i-tan), see 

Archbishop. 
Metz, becomes French, 610. 
Michael Angelo (mi'kel an'je-lo), 

597. 
"Middle Ages," the, 465, note. 
Milan, map after 364; Edict of, 418- 

419. 



30 



INDEX 



Miletus (mil-e'tus) , map after 90. 

Miltiades (mil-tl'a-de§), 141, 142. 

Milton, John, 662. 

Milvian (mil'vi-an) Bridge, Battle 
of, 417. 

Mina (mi'na), Babylonian, 278. 

Ministerial government, 666-668. 

Minnesingers (min-ne-sing'er.s), 500. 

Minos (mi'nos), of Crete, 86. 

Mithridates (mith'ri-da-tes) VI, 333, 
337. 

Model Parliament, the, 519-520. 

Modern history, defined, 465, note. 

Moeris (mae'ris) Lake, in Egypt, 28. 

Mohammed (mo-ham'med), 453- 
454. 

Mohammedanism, 453 ff.; attacks 
Europe, 455; in Spain, 455; re- 
pulsed at Tours, 456; later char- 
acter, 456 ; in 11th century, 533- 
535; and Crusades, which see; in 
Southeast Europe, 583-584. 

Monasticism (mon-as'ti-cism) , ori- 
gin and character, 447-449; over- 
thrown in England. 

Money, no coinage in ancient Egypt, 
23, 30; invention of coinage, 65; 
Solon's, 120; early Roman, 278; 
under Empire, drain to the Ea.st, 
377, 426; lack in Middle Ages, 
464, 480; increase of, undermines 
feudalism, 542. 

Money power in politics, in Roman 
Republic, 286-287, 303, 309. 

Montcalm (mont-cahn'), 689. 

Montfort (mont'fort) Simon of, 518- 
520. 

More, Sir Thomas, 599-600, 619. 

Moriscoes (mo-ris'coes), expelled, 
630. 

Morgarten (mor-gar'ten) , Battle of, 
584. 

"Morton's Fork," 649, note. 



Moses, 78. 

Moustier (mous'ti-a) Le, and Stone 

Age remains, 4. 
Munda, Battle of, 344; map after 

288. 
Municipia (mu-ni-cip'i-a), Roman 

265, 266; survival under Empire 

370-374. 
Museum, Plato's, at Athens, 232 

Ptolemy's, at Alexandi-ia, 233. 
Mycale (myc'a-le), Battle of, 153 

map after 81. 
Mycenae (my-ce'n«), 89, 90; map 

after 81. 
Mycenaean culture, 89 ff. 

Nahum, on fall of Assyria, 52. 

Nantes (nantes). Edict of, 632; re- 
voked, 678-679. 

Naples, University of, ri.se, 557. 

Narbonne (nar-bonne), 383; map 
after 364. 

Naseby (nase'by). Battle of, 657. 

Nature worship, Egyptian, 37-88; 
Chaldean, 63; Greek, 99-100; Ro- 
man, 246; Teutonic, 433. 

Naucratis (nau-cra'tis) , Greek col- 
ony in Egypt, 44; map, 18. 

Naupactus (nau-pac'tus) , map after 
81. 

Nausicaa (nau-sic'a-a), 97. 

Navarre (na-varre') map after 522 ; 
Henry of, 631. 

Naxos (nax'os), map after 81. 

Nearchus (ne-ar'«hus) , 217 ; route 
of, map after 214. 

Nebuchadnezzar (neb-u-€had-nez'- 
zar) , 52 ; prayer of, 64. 

Neco (ne'co), of Egypt, 44. 

Nero (ne'ro), Claudius (Claud'i-us), 
consul, 294. 

Nero, Emperor, 359-361. 

Nerva (ner'va), Emperor, 366. 



INDEX 



31 



Netherlands, to 1500, 586-588; and 

Spain, 627. See Belgium and 

Holland. 
Neustria (neus'tri-a) , 452 ; map af tei' 

p. 451. 
"New Monarchy," in England, 

Tudor, 575-576. 
New Stone Age, 8-12. 
Nicaea (ni-cse'a) , map after 364 ; 

Council of, 423. 
Nicene (ni'ceue) Creed, the, history 

of, 423. 
Nicholas V, Pope, 581. 
Nicias (nic'i-as), 199. 
Nicomedia (nic-o-me'di-a), map 

after 364. 
Nile, ths, 17 ; map, p 18. 
Nineveh (nin'e-veh), 49 ; map after 

41. 
Nimes (nem). Aqueduct of, 371. 
Nobility, Continental and English, 

481. 
Normandy, 470 ; map after 522. 
Normans in Italy, 556. 
Norseman, 469, 470. 
Northumbria (nor-thum'bri-a) , 

map, 474. 
Norway, 586. 
Norwich (nor'wich). Cathedral of, 

563. 
Notre Dame (notr-dam'), school of, 

555. 
Numa (nu'nia), 240. 
Numidia (nu-mid'i-a), 329. 

Obsidian (ob-sid'i-an), 82. 
Octavius Caesar, 351-353 ; see 

Augustus. 
Odovaker (o-do-va'ker), 438. 
Odysseus (o-dys'seus), 92, 97, 98, 

99, 101. 
Odyssey (od'ys-sey), 92. 
Old Stone Age, 3-8. 



Oligarchy, defined, 90. 

Olympia, map after 90. 

Olympiad, 106. 

Olympic Games, 105-106 : closed, 

420. 
Olympus, map after 81. 
Olynthus (o-lyn'thus), map after 81, 
Ordeal, Trial by, 443-444. 
Orleans, map after 522. 
Ostia, map, p. 239. 
Ostracism (os'tra-cism), 125. 
Ostrogoths (os'tro-goths), 430. 
Oxus (ox' us) River, map after 67. 
Otto I, and Hungarian invasions, 

524 ; and Holy Roman Empire, 

525. 
Oudenarde (ou-de-narcZe), Battle of, 

680. 
Ounce, a division of the Babylonian 

mina, equivalent in weight to the 

shekel, 278. 
Oxford, University of, 557. 
Oxford Reformers, 598. 
Ozymandias (o-zy-man'di-as), 45. 

Paetus (pS'tus), 393. 

Pagans, term explained, 423, note. 

Pages, training of, in feudal times, 

491, 492. 
Painting, Cave-man, 8 ; Egyptian, 

37 ; Greek, 109, 229 ; medieval, 

560; Renaissance, 597 ; and oils, 

597. 
Palatine (palatine) Hill, map, 239 ; 

" square town " on, 244. 
Palestine, map, 78. 
Palmyra (pal-my'ra), 403; map 

after 364. 
Pamphylia (pam-pliyl'i-a), map 

after 108. 
Pantheon (pan'the-on), the, 396, 

.397. 
Papacy, claims of early Roman 



32 



INDEX 



bishops, 422, 457 ; advantages of 
Eome, 457 ; Eastern rivals re- 
moved by Mohammedan conquest, 
457 ; and by Great Scliism, 457- 
459 ; growtliL into temporal power, 
458 ; and Lombards, 459 ; and 
Franks, 460 ; and Holy Roman 
Empire, 525-532 ; in Renaissance 
age, 578-581 ; conflict with na- 
tional spirit, in England, 578 ; in 
France, 579 ; " Babylonian Cap- 
tivity" of, 579-580 ; Great Schism, 
580 ; at close of Middle Ages, 581 ; 
and Reformation, which see. 

Papal states, 460 ; map after 530. 

Paper, invention of, 600. 

Papyrus (pa-py'rus), 33, 56. 

Paris, University of, rise, 555 ff. 

Paros (pa'ros), map after 81. 

Parrhasius (par-rha'si-us), Greek 
painter. 

Parthenon (par'the-non), 170-171 ; 
cuts on, 114, 116, 162, 168. 

Parthians (par'thi-ans), 341; map 
after 364. 

"Partnership Emperors," 412 ff. 

Patriarch, in church organization, 
422. 

Patricians (pa-tri'cians), 247 ff. 

Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, 405- 
406. 

Pausanias (pau-sa'ni-as), king of 
Sparta, 150, 164, 155. 

Pavia (pa'vi-a), Battle of, 591. 

Pedagogue (ped'a-gogue), term ex- 
plained, 193. 

Pediment (ped'i-ment), in architec- 
ture, 110. 

Peloponnesian (pel-o-pon-ne'si-an) , 
War, 195 f£. 

Peloponnesus (pel-o-pon-ne'sus) , 
map, 126. 

Penates (pe-na'te§), 100. 



Pentelicus (pen-tel'i-cus), Mount, 

map, 138. 
Pergamos (per'ga^mos), 218 ; map 

after 214. 
Periander (per-i-an'der), 114. 
Pericles, 159-161 ff. ; glorification 

of Athens, 178. 
Persepolis (per-sep'o-lis) , maps after 

67, 214. 
Persia, service to ancient civiliza- 
tion, 66, 67-71 ; and Greeks, 185 

ff. 
Persian Wars, 135 ff. 
Perugino (pe-rli'gi-no), 597. 
Peter "the Great," 682-683. 
Peter the Hermit, 537. 
Peter's Pence, 497. 
Petition of Right, 650-651, 
Petrarch (pe'trar€h), 695-696. 
Phaedrus (ph*d'rus), 182. 
Phalanx (pha'lanx), Theban, 206 ; 

Macedonian, 210 ; compared with 

Roman legion, 271 ; conquered 

by legion, 301-302. 
Phalerum (pha-le'rum), map, 154. 
Pharaohs (pha'raohs), of Egypt, 

20-21. 
Pharos (pha'ros), lighthouse, 235. 
Pharsalus (phar-sa'lus). Battle of, 

343 ; map after 364. 
Phidias (phid'i-as), 171. 
Phidippides (phi-dip'pi-des), 138, 

140. 
Philip II, of Macedonia, 208-211. 
Philip V, ally of Hannibal, 291, 301, 

302. 
Philip II, of Spain, 610, 627-630. 
Philip III, and the Moriscoes, 630. 
Philip V, 679. 
Philip II, of France, and Henry II, 

514 ; consolidated France, 522- 

523. 
Philip IV, 523, 579. 



INDEX 



33 



Philip of Hapsburg (haps'biiro), 

589, 591. 
Philippics (pbil-ip'pics), of Demos- 
thenes, 210. 
Philippi (phil-ip'pi). Battle of, 353; 

map after 364. 
Philistines, 78 ; map, 78. 
Philopoemen (phil-o-pde'men), 236. 
Philosophy, see Greek Philosophy. 
Phocis (pho'cis), map after 81. 
Phoenicians (phue-ni'cians), 74-76 ; 

map, 78 ; alphabet, 76 ; influence 

on Greeks, 107-108. 
Phrygia (phryg'i-a), map after 66. 
Pilgrimage of Grace, 617. 
Pilgrimages, in Medieval life, 536. 
Pillars of Hercules, map after 108. 
Pindar, 112. 
Pippin the Short, 460. 
Piraeus (pi-r^'us), map, 154. 
Pisistratus ( pis-is 'tra-tus), 121, 122. 
Pitt, William, the Elder, 688. 
Plantagenet (plan-tag'e-net), 509. 
Plassey (plas'sey), Battle of, 688. 
Plataea (pla'tje-a), and Athens at 

Marathon, 138, 139 ; Battle of, 

150-151 ; map after p. 81. 
Plato, 231, 232. 
Plebeians (ple-be'ians), at Rome, 

247 ff. 
Plebiscites (pleb'is-cites), Roman, 

257, 2.58. 
Pliny the Younger, 372, 384, 390. 
Plow, evolution of, 11. 
Plutarch (plu'tar^h), 236, 385; 

quoted frequently. 
Pnyx (j)nyx), 165. 
Poitou (pwa^too'), map after 522. 
Poland, partitions, 692. 
Political, term explained, 96. 
Political parties, rise of, in England, 

663-664. 
PoUio (pol'li-o), 394. 



Polo, Marco, 602. 

Polybius (p6-lyb'i-us), 236; quoted 
frequently; at Carthage, 300. 

Pompeii (pom-pe'ii), 364, 372; 
map, 364; ruins of pictured, 311, 
314. 

Pompey " the Great," 336-343. 

Pontus (pon'tus) , map after 108. 

Pope, origin of name, 457. 

Porsenna (por-sen'na), 251. 

Portugal, origin, 582; and geograph- 
ical discovery, 602-603. 

Poseidon (po-sei'don), 100. 

Post roads, Persian, 70-71; map 
after 67; see Roman roads. 

Pottery, significance in culture, 6 ; 
potter's wheel an Egyptian inven- 
tion, 32; in Cretan civilization, 82, 
88; Greek vases, 109; many illus- 
trations from, as on 109. 

Praeneste (pr«-nes'te), map, 242. 

Praetor (pr«'tor), Roman, 273. 

Praetorians (prS-to'ri-ans), 355. 

Praxiteles (prax-it'e-le§), 198, 199. 

Prefecture (pre-fect'ure), in Italy, 
267 ; model for provincial govern- 
ment, 288; a division of Empire, 
414; table of, 414. 

Prehistoric man, 3-11. 

Presb3rterianism, in Scotland, 624; 
in England, 625, 658. 

Pride's Purge, 659. 

Primogeniture (pri-mo-gen'i-ture), 
481. 

Printing, invention, 600. 

Proconsul (pro'con-sul), 297, 336, 
345. 

Propylaea (pr6p-y-l£e'a), of Acropo- 
lis, 169. 

Protectorate (pro-tec'to-rate), term 
explained, 302. 

Protestantism, and Luther, 604 ff.; 
denial of authority, 607; name. 



34 



INDEX 



609; see Lutheran Church, Cal- 
vinism, etc. 

Provence (pro-vons'), origin of 
name, 297, 340. 

Prussia, 524; growth to Thirty- 
Years' war, 685; Great Elector, 
685-686; Kingdom, 686; under 
Frederick II, 686 ff . ; and Poland, 
692; map after 550, 690. 

Psammetichus (psam-met'i-€hus), 
44. 

Ptolemy (ptol'e-my) I, of Egypt, 
221, 235. 

Ptolemy II (Philadelphus), 221, 233. 

Ptolemy, geographer, 385. 

Pultava (piil-ta'va). Battle of , 684. 

Punic Wars, see Carthage, Rome. 

Punjab, map after 67. 

Puritanism, explained, 643-644; 
English divisions, 644; and Amer- 
ica, 675; see Calvin, Presbyterian- 
ism, etc. 

Pydna (pyd'na). Battle of, 304; map 
after 288. 

Pym, John, 655. 

Pyramids, Egyptian, 26-28. 

Pyrrhus (pyr'r/ius), 263, 264. 

Pythagoras (py-thag'o-ras), 113. 

Quadi (quad'i), 400; map, 436. 

Quadrivium (quad-riv'i-um) , Ro- 
man, 382, note; medieval, 554. 

Queen Anne's War, 679. 

Questors (quMs'tors), Roman, 273. 

Quintain (quin'tain), exercise of, 
492. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 674. 

Rameses (ra-me'sej), II, 42. 

Ramillies (ra^me'ye). Battle of, 680. 

Raphael (raph'a-el), 597. 

Reformation, the Protestant, 604 ff. ; 
in Germany, 605 ff. ; in France 
and Switzerland, 610 ff. ; checked 



in south Europe, 613-615; in 
England, 616 ff. ; and Mary Tudor, 
620-621; see Luther, Calvin, Pu- 
ritanism, Church of England. 

Regillus (re-gil'lus). Lake, 251, 
map, 239. 

Regulus (reg'u-lus), 286. 

Rehoboam (re-/io-bo'am), 80. 

Relief sculptures, definition, 20, 
note; illustrations, frequent. 

Religion, prehistoric, 7; Egyptian, 
37-41; Chaldean, 62-64; Persian, 
71-73; Hebrews, 76-81; Greek, 
97-102, 181-182; see Greek Phil- 
osophy; Roman, 245-247; Teu- 
tonic, 433; see Christianity, Mo- 
hammedanism. 

Renaissance, the, 593-603. 

Representative government, to grow 
out of Teutonic assemblies, 449; 
principle developed in England, 
505, 518-519. 

Rhegium (r/ie'gi-um), 156; map 
after 108. 

Rheims (r/ieims). Cathedral of, 561. 

Rhodes, map after 81; center of 
Hellenistic culture, 218, 382; and 
Rome, 305; and Knights of St. 
John, 541. 

Ribault (re-bo'), 671. 

Richard I, of England, 516; and 3d 
Crusade, 540. 

Richard II, 569-572. 

Richelieu (re'shel-yu), 633. 

Roads, Roman, 269-270; map, 269; 
under Roman Empire, 389 and 
map after 364. 

Roland, Song of, 461, note. 

Roman colonies, 265; map, 269. 

Roman Empire, see Borne; and 
Julius Caesar, 34.3-351; Julius to 
Augustus, 351-353; Augustus, 
354-357; in first two centuries, 



INDEX 



35 



story of, 357-369; character of 
government, 370-373; local gov- 
ernment, 372; imperial defense, 
385-389; two centuries of peace 
and prosperity, 373-398; cities, 
373-374; forms of industry, 375 ff. ; 
commerce, 375-377; banking and 
panics, 378-379; taxation and 
roads, 388-389 ; the world Roman- 
ized in sentiment, 380-382 ; educa- 
tion, 382-383; architecture, liter- 
ature, etc., 382 ff. ; morals, 389- 
398; decline in 3d century, 399 ff.; 
barbarian attacks, 400; slavery as 
a cause of decline, 401; rise of 
Christianity, which see; Diocle- 
tian's reorganization, 412^15; 
Constantine and victory of 
Christianity, 415-421; church of 
4th century, 422-423; society in 
4th century, 424 ff.; government 
and money power, 426-430 ; decay 
in society, 424 ff. ; see Teutons, 
Barbarian invasions, Greek Em- 
pire, Holy Boman Empire. 

Roman Law, taught at University 
of Bologna, 656. See Justinian 
Code. 

Roman roads, 269-270; map, 269; 
and (for Empire) after 364. 

Romance languages, 441. 

Rome, land and peoples of Italy, 
237-239; legendary history, 240- 
241 ; society and institutions under 
the kings, 242-251; map, 243; 
class struggles in early Republic, 
251-260; social fusion, 258; Licin- 
ian laws, 259-260; unification of 
Italy, 261-264 ; Republican consti- 
tution, 265-276 ; Roman life in 
the best age, 277-281; contribu- 
tions to civilization, 280-281, 449; 
winning of the western Mediter- 



ranean, 282 ff. ; First Punic War, 
282-287 ; provincial system begun, 
287-288; Second Punic War, 288- 
295; Rome in Spain, 296-297; 
Third Punic War, 297-300; win- 
ning of the East, 301-306; Rome 
the sole world power, 306; the 
two halves of Roman world, 306; 
new period of class strife, 309 ff. ; 
decline of yeomanry after Punic 
Wars, 315-317; new capitalism, 
308-311; trade monopolies, 309; 
money power and government, 
309; rise of luxury, 310-311; de- 
cay of constitution, 317; evils in 
the provinces, 318-320; slavery, 
320-321; Cato and Scipio — at- 
tempts at reform, 322; the Gracchi, 
323-328; Jugurthine War, 329-330; 
Marius saves from Cimbri, 330; 
Social War, 331; Italy enters Ro- 
man state, 331 ; Marius and Sulla, 
332 ff.; ruleof Sulla, 323; Pompey 
and Caesar, founding the Empire, 
336-342, see Boman Empire. 

Rome, city of, under Empire, fire in 
Nero's reign, 360 ; government, 
372 ; industries, 382 ; patriarch- 
ate, 422 ; sacked by West Goths, 
435 ; by Vandals, 436. 

Romulus, 240. 

Romulus Augustulus (au-gus'tu- 
lus), 438. 

Roncesvalles (rons-val'), 461; map 
after 464. 

Rosetta (ro-set'ta) Stone, 33-34. 

Rossbach (ros'baiv). Battle of, 687. 

"Round Heads," 657. 

Rubicon (ru'bi-con), the crossing of, 
342 ; map after 238. 

Rubruk (ru'brlik), Friar, 601. 

Rudolph of Hapsburg (haps'btire), 
581. 



36 



INDEX 



Runnymede (run'ny-mede), 517. 

Russia, and Tartars, 681 ; independ- 
ence and expansion, to Peter, 682 ; 
and Peter the Great, 682-683 ; 
veneered with Western culture, 
683 ; expansion toward open seas, 
683 ff. ; and Poland, 691-692. 

Sabines (sa'bines) , 210 ; map after 

238 and on 242. 
Saguntum (sa-gun'tum), 289 ; map 

after 288. 
St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 631- 

632. 
St. Eloy, sermon of, 495. 
St. Francis 552. 
St. Sophia, Church of, 439. 
Sais (sa'is), map, 18. 
Saladin (sa-la'din), 540. 
Salamis (sal'a-mis), and Solon, 118 ; 

Battle of, 146-149; map, 147. 
Salerno (sa-ler'no), University of, 

556. 
Salisbury (salis'bu-ry) Cathedral, 

562. 
Samaria (sa-ma'ri-a), map, 78. 
Samnites (sam'nites), map after 

238. 
Samos (sa'mos), 157 ; map after 81. 
Samson, 78. 
Samuel, 78. 
Sappho (sa'fo), 112. 
Saracen (sar'a-cen), 536; see Mo- 
hammedanism. 
Sardinia, map after 108. 
Sardis (sar'dis), burned in Ionian 

revolt, 136 ; map after 65. 
Sargon (sar'gon), of Assyria, 49. 
Saul, 79. 
Saxons, in Britain, 471 ; map, 474 ; 

and Charlemagne, 462. 
Scandinavia, see Sweden^ Norway, 

Denmark. 



Schliemann (schKe'mann) , and 
work, 92-93. 

Schoolmen, Medieval, 558-559. 

Schools, in Chaldea, 57 ; in Greece 
in age of Pericles, 192-194 ; Ko- 
man, 279 ; in Koman Empire, 
383 ; in Empire of Charlemagne, 
480 ; in Middle Ages, 554 ff. ; 
grow into universities, which see. 

Schwyz (sell wits), map, 585. 

Science, Egyptian, 34^35 ; Chal- 
dean, 59-60 ; Greek, related to 
philosophy, 112-113 ; so too in 
age of Pericles, 174 ; lack of sci- 
entific method, 180 ; in Alexan- 
drian age, 233-234 ; under Ro- 
man Empire, 384 ; decline after 
2d century, 401 ; in Dark Ages, 
558 ; and Renaissance — discovery 
of method of experiment, 636-637 . 

Scipio (scip'i-o) (P. Cornelius 
Scipio African us), 294. 

Scipio Africanus the Younger, 299- 
300, 322. 

Scotland, Presbyterian, 624 ; united 
to England under James, 645, 
654 ; and Archbishop Laud, 654 ; 
Covenanters, 654 ; and English 
Civil War, 659 ; Act of Union, 
668. 

Scrooby Pilgrims, the, 664. 

Scutage, 510. 

Scyros (scy'ros), map after 81. 

Scythians, in Assyria, 52 ; and Per- 
sians, 68. 

Segesta (se-ges'ta), map after 108. 

Seleucidae (se-leu'ci-dae), rulers of 
the house of Seleucus. 

Seleucus (se-leu'cus), of Syria, 220. 

Semites (sem'ites), and Semitic 
speech, 47-48. 

Sempach (sem'paeh). Battle of, 
584 ; map, 585. 



INDEX 



37 



Senlac (sen'lac) , Battle of, 502. 

Sennacherib (sen-naeli'e-rib), 50. 

Separatists, 663-664. 

Septuagint (sep'tu-a-gint), the, 233. 

Serfdom, in Roman Empire, 428- 
429 ; in feudal age, 477, 484 ff. ; 
disappearance in England, 566 ff. 

Sertorius (ser-to'ri-us), 333, 334, 
336. 

Servetus (ser-ve'tus), 612 ; and dis- 
covery of circulatory system, 612. 

Servius TuUius (ser'vi-us tul'li-us) , 
241. 

Seven Years' War, 687-689. 

Severus (se-ve'rus), Septimius (sep- 
tlm'i-us). Emperor, 399-400. 

Shakspere, William, 626. 

Shalmaneser (shal-ma-ne'ser) II, 
51. 

Shekel (shek'el), a Babylonian 
"ounce" as a money unit, 65; 
see Ounce, 278. 

Ship money, in England, 653. 

Sicily, Greek colonies in, 108 ; and 
wars with Carthage, 136-137, 149 ; 
Athenian disaster in, 199 ; and 
Punic Wars, 282-287 ; Roman 
province, 288 ; union with Ploly 
Roman Empire, 530 ; Charles of 
Anjou in, 531 ; becomes Spanish, 
591. 

Sicyon (sish'i-on), and Aratus, 225 ; 
map after 81. 

Sidon (si'don), 75; map, 78. 

Silesia (si-le'si-a), and Prussia, 686. 

Similis (sim'i-lis), 393. 

Simon of Montfort, 517-520. 

Slavery, origin, 10-11 ; Greek, in 
Sparta, 127 ; in Athens, in age of 
Pericles, 179 ; Roman, after Punic 
Wars, 320-321 ; under Empire, 
milder, 394 ; but of enormous 
amount, 401 \ §ee Serfdom. 



Slavs (Slavs), 442, 475. See Rus- 
sians, Serbs, etc. 

Sobieski (so-bi-es'ki), John, 583. 

Social War, tlie, in Italy, 331. 

Socrates (soc'ra-teg) , 175-177 ; teach- 
ings on immortality, 177. 

Sogdiana (sog'di-an'a) , map after 
67. 

Soissons (swa-son'). Battle of, 459 ; 
map after 460. 

Solomon, 79. 

Solon (so'lon) , democratic reforms, 
118-121. 

Solyman (sol'y-man) the Magnifi- 
cent, 609. 

Sophists, the, 175. 

Sophocles (soph'o-clej), 171. 

Spain, Carthage in, 288-289; Ro- 
mans in, 296-297, 336; Vandal 
conquest, 437 ; Gothic kingdom, 
437 ; Arab conquest, 466 ; and 
Charlemagne, 474 ; African, to 
1492, 582 ; recovery, 582 ; master 
of South Italy, 591 ; union with 
Holy Roman Empire, under 
Charles, 591 ; colonial empire, 
582 ; see Charles V; falls to 
Philip II, 610, 627 ff. ; and Neth- 
ei'land revolt, 627 ff. ; and war 
with England, 629 ; decay, 630- 
631 ; and America, 669-670. 

Spanish Succession, War of, 679. 

Sparta, leading Dorian city, kings 
in, 126-128 ; government, 126- 
127 ; Spartan training, 127-129 ; 
and Peloponnesian League, 126, 
and Persian Wars, 143-151 ; Me.s- 
senian revolt, 159 ; Peloponnesian 
War, 195-201 ; leadership in Hel- 
las, 202 ff . ; and Leuctra, 205-206 
decay and social reform, 200, 226 
and Achaean League, 227-228 
map after 81. 



38 



INDEX 



Spartacus (spar'ta-cus), 336. 

Spenser, Edmund, 626. 

Sphinx, 27. 

Squire, training of, in feudal age, 
491. 

Stamford Bridge, Battle of, 502. 

State, definition of, 19, note. 

States General, Frencli, see Estates 
General; Netherlands. 

Stephen, Pope, and Pippin, 472. 

Stephen of Blois, 538-539. 

Stephen of England, 508-509. 

Stilicho (stil'i-€ho) , 435. 

Stoics, 232. 

Stone Age, 3-11. 

Stonehenge (stone'henge), 11. 

Strabo (stra'bo), 384. 

Strassburg (strass'burg) , Battle of, 
Julian's, 420 ; seized by Prance 
from Holy Roman Empii'e, 678 ; 
map after 364. 

Sulla (sul'la), 330-334. 

Sulpicius (siil-pic'i-us), 332. 

Sumerians (sU-mer'i-ans), the, 46. 

Susa (sU'sa), maps after 67, 214. 

Sybaris (syb'a-ris), Greek colony 
in Italy, 108 ; map after 108. 

Sjnracuse, map after, 108 ; destruc- 
tion by Rome, 290-292. 

Sweden, and Denmark, 586 ; and 
Thirty Vears' War, 634 ; gains of 
territory, 635 ; loses pai-t of east 
Baltic coast to Russia, 684. 

Switzerland, to French Revolution, 
584, 585, 635. 

Syria, maps 78 and after 41 and 
214; Kingdom of, in Graeco- 
Oriental World, 220. 

Tables, dates, which see ; English 

kings. 
Tacitus (tac'i-tus), 385 ; on early 

Christians, 406 ; on Teutons, 434. 



Talent (tal'ent), the Greek, 120, 
Talmud (tal'mud), the, 62. 
Tanagra (ta-na'gra), map after 90. 
Tarentum (tar-en'tum), map after 

108. 
Tarquins, Roman tyrants, 241. 
Tartar invasions of Europe, 681. 
Taurus (tau'rus) Mountains, maps, 

43, 50. 
Telescope, invention of, 600. 
Tempe (tem'pe), Vale of, 132 ; 

map after 81. 
Temple of Solomon, 79. 
Ten Thousand, March of the, 204. 
Tenants in chief, term explained, 

518. 
Terence, 395. 
Terminus (ter'min-us), god of 

bounds, 246. 
Tertullian (ter-tiil'i-an) ,402 ; quoted, 

381. 
Tetzel (tet'zel), John, 605, 606. 
Teutoberg (teu'to-berg) Forest, 

Battle of, 387 ; map after 364. 
Teutonic contributions to civiliza- 
tion, 449-450. 
Teutonic Law, 444. 
Teutons, in their first homes, 432- 

434 ; invasions, 433 ff. ; kingdoms 

on Roman soil, 434 ff. ; conquests 

by small numbers, 442 ; and the 

Dark Ages, 442 ff. ; "Teutons" 

and " Germans," 450. 
Thales (tlia'le§), 112 ; and Ionian 

revolt, 135. 
Thapsus (thap'sus). Battle of, 344 ; 

map after 282. 
Thasos (tha'sos), map after 81. 
Theaters, Greek, 171-174 ; Roman, 

314. 
Thebes (tliebes), in Egypt, 20 ; 

map on 18. 
Thebes, in Greece, limited leader- 



INDEX 



39 



ship in Boeotia, 115 ; and Atliens, 
and Persian War, 139 ; war 
with Sparta, 204 ; democracy ,in, 
205 ; Leuctra, 20G ; supremacy in 
Hellas, 207 ; Epaminondas, 207 ; 
overthrow, 207 ; destroyed by 
Alexander, 213 ; map after 81. 

Themistocles (the-mis'to-cles), 141- 
142, 146-148. 

Theocritus (the-oc'ri-tus) , 229. 

Theodoric (the-od'o-ric). East Goth, 
438. 

Theodoric, West Goth, 400. 

Theodosius (the-o-do'si-us) II, 420, 
421. 

Theogony (the-og'o-ny), of Hesiod, 
112. 

Thermopylae (ther-mop'y-ku), Bat- 
tle of, 143-144, 145 ■ map after 81. 

Thersites (ther-sl'teg) , 97. 

Theseus (the'seus), 95. 

Thespis (thes'pis), 112, 122. 

Thessaly, map after 81. 

Thirty Years' Truce, between Ath- 
ens and Sparta, 162. 

Thirty Years' War, 633-035. 

Thor, 433. 

Thrace, part of Persian Empire in 
500, G7, 135 ; colonized by Chal- 
cis, 108 ; Athenian colonies in, 
123 ; map after 108. 

Thucydides (thu-cyd'i-des), 174; 
quoted frequently. 

Thuringia (thti-rin'gi-a), map after 
451. 

Thumosis (thii-mo'sis), 44. 

Tiber, map after 238 and on 239. 

Tiberius (ti-be'ri-us), 357-358. 

Ticinus (ti-ci'nus). Battle of, 289 ; 

map after 238. 
■ Tigris-Euphrates states, 46-84 ; 
map, 50. 

Titus (ti'tus), 363-364. 



Titian (tish'an), 597. 

Tintoretto (tin-to-ret'to), 597. 

Toga (to'ga), the, described, 279. 

Torture by Water, medieval, 551. 

Tory, 663-664. 

Tostig (tos'tig), 501. 

Totemism (to'tem-ism), Egyptian, 

37. 
Toulouse (tou-lou.se'), map after 

364. 
Tournament, 488-489. 
Tours (toor), Battle of, 455^56; 

map after 451. 
Towns, under lloman Empire, 370- 

372 ; few from GOO to 1100 a.d., 

440 ; survival in south Europe, 

446 ; rise of, after Crusades, 542, 

544 ff. ; and feudalism, 544-546 ; 

life in, 547-548 ; gilds, 548, 550 ; 

leagues of, see City- State. 
Trajan (tra'jan). Emperor, 366-367, 

373. 
Transubstantiation (tran-sub-stan- 

shi-a'sliion), Doctrine of, 495. 
Trasimene (tras-i-me'ne). Battle of, 

289 ; map after 238. 
Trebia (tre'bi-a). Battle of, 289; 

map after 238. 
Tribune, Roman, 256-257. 
Tribunician (trib-u-nic'i-an) power, 

the, 345. 
Trier, 380 ; map after, 364. 
Trireme (tri'reme), 158, 161. 
Triumvirate (tri-um'vi-rate). First, 

339 ; Second, 352. 
Trivium (triv'i-um), the Roman, 

382 ; medieval, 554. 
Troubadours (trou'bii-dours) , the, 

560. 
Truce of God, 483. 
Troy, stoi-y of siege, 92 ; excavations 

at, 93 ; map after 108. 
Tsar, title, 370. 



40 



INDEX 



Tudors, the, 575. 

Turanians (tu-ra'ni-ans), 436. 

Turks, the, 536 ff. ; and Crusades, 
537 ff ; in Southeast Europe, 583- 
584. 

Twelve Tables, the laws of the, 257. 

Tyrants, Greek, place between oli- 
garchies and democracies, 114— 
115 ; in Athens, 121-123 ; set up 
later in Greece by Macedonia, 
223 ; in early Rome, 244, 2.53. 

Tyre, 75, 76 ; map, 78. 

Tyrrhenian (tyr-r/ien'i-an) Sea, 
287 ; map after 238. 

Umias (ul'fil-as), 424. 

Ulpian (ul'pi-an), 395, 403. 

Universities, origin in Graeco-Ori- 
ental World, 232-233 ; Roman, 
382 ; Medieval, 555-559. 

Unterwalden ( oon 'ter-val-den) , 

map, 585. 

Ur, inChaldea, 49, 76 ; map after 47. 

Urban I, Pope, and Crusades, 537. 

Uri (oo-re'), Swiss canton, map, 
585. 

Utopia, 600 ; quoted on English 
peasantry, 640. 

Utica (u'ti-ca), founded by Phoeni- 
cians, 75 ; capital of Roman Af- 
rica, 299 ; map after 108. 

Valens (va'lens). Emperor, and 
West Goths, 435. 

Valerius, Manius (va^le'ri-us, ma'- 
ni-us), 255. 

Vandals, 436. 

Van Dyck (dik'), 648. 

Vane, Sir Harry, 655, 660. 

Van Eycks (i^^s'), the, and oil paint- 
ing, 597. 

Vaphio (vaph'i-o) Cups, the, 85. 

Varro (var'ro). Consul, 290. 



Vasco da Gama (vas'co da Ga'ma), 
603. 

Veil (ve'ii), map, 242. 

Venetia (ve-ne'ti-a) , map after 238. 

Venice, and 4th Crusade, 540. 

Venus (ve'nus), 101. 

Verdun (ver-dun'). Treaty of, 468. 

Vergil (ver'gil), 384. 

Verres (ver'reg), and Sicily, 320. 

Vespasian (ves-pa'si-an). Emperor, 
361-363. 

Vesta (ves'ta) , 245. 

Vestal Virgins, 246. 

Vezere (va-zar') River, 4. 

Vienna, and the Turks, 683. 

Villa, Roman, 312-313 ; Teutonic, 
445-446. 

Villeins (vil'leins), 484 ff. 

Virginia, story of, 256. 

Viriathus (vir-i-a'thus), Spanish pa- 
triot, 296. 

Visigoths (vis'i-goths), see West 
Goths. 

Volscians (vol'sci-ans), map, 242. 

Vulgate (vul'gate), the, 599. 

Wallenstein (val'len-stln), 634. 
Walpole, Sir Robert, 667, 668. 
Wars of the Roses, 575. 
Wars of the Succession, 218. 
Wat the Tyler, 570. 
Watling Street, 473 ; map, 474. 
Wedmore, Treaty of, 473. 
Wergeld (ver'gelt), 443. 
Wentworth, Thomas, 653. 
Wes'sex, 471, 472 ; map, 474. 
Westphalia (west-pha'li-a). Peace 

of, 635. 
West Goths, 435^36 ; map after 

436. 
Whigs, 663-664. 
William I, of England, 501-508. 
William II, 508. 



INDEX 



41 



William III, 665-667. 

William the Silent, 628-629. 

William Tell, myth of, 584. 

Winkelried, myth of, 584. 

Wingless Victory, temple of, 169. 

Witan (wi'tan) , 501,518. 

Wittenberg (vit'ten-bero), 606. 

Woden (wo'den), 433. 

Woman, in primitive industry, 10; 
in Egypt, 24; in Greece, 120, 
186-188; in Sparta, 129; in early 
Rome, 249; in Roman Empire, 
393. 

"Works and Days," of Hesiod, 112. 

Worms (vormz), Concordat of, 528. 

Worms, Luther at, 607-608. 

Writing, stages in invention of, 14, 
15-16; see Alphabet, Hieroglyph- 
ics, Cuneiform, Printing. 

Wurtemberg (wurt'em-bero), and 
Thirty Years' War, 634. 

Wyclif (wy'clif), John, 560, 568, 580. 



Xenophon (xen'o-phon), 174; and 
"March of the Ten Thousand," 
174; at ruins of Nineveh, .52. 

Xenophanes (xen-oph'a-nes), 113. 

Xerxes (xerx'es), 142, 143, 148-149. 

Yorkist kings and claims, table of, 

570. 
Ypres (e'pr). Hall at, 687. 

Zama (za'ma), Battle of, 294; map 

after 288. 
Zend Avesta (zend'a-ves'ta), 71, 

72. 
Zeno (ze'no). Emperor, 438. 
Zeno, the Stoic, 232. 
Zenobia (ze-no'bi-a), 403. 
Zeus, 100. 

Zeuxis (zeux'is), 229. 
Zoroaster (zo-ro-as'ter), 71. 
Ziirich (tsu'riii) 684; map, 585. 
Zwingli (zwing'U), 610-611. 



